Abstract
Compared to fixed wing aircraft, the helicopter is still a challenging configuration in terms of drag evaluation and understanding. In order to reduce and optimize the drag, the interactions between all components of fuselage and rotor head have to be analyzed. Thanks to the computational resources increase, the CFD becomes an efficient tool, complementary to the wind tunnel testing, to investigate different geometries and flow conditions. In the frame of the JTI CleanSky European project, the work presented in this paper is a preliminary task before the optimization and the drag reduction. It deals with the drag prediction of the fuselage and its main rotor head by CFD. The approach used here relies on a partitioning of the computational domain into near-body structured grids and off-body Cartesian grids, based on the Chimera method. The current work includes analysis of solutions for the isolated fuselage, the isolated rotor head and the complete configuration.
Published Version
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