Numerical investigation of aerodynamic interactions for the coaxial rotor system in low-speed forward flight

Abstract

This study is conducted to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics of a coaxial rotor in low-speed forward flight using a high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver. Numerical simulations are performed on the coaxial rotor and its isolated upper and lower rotors at two small advance ratios, 0.12 and 0.24. Interaction events in the flowfield, especially blade-vortex-interaction (BVI), are studied in detail. As the forward speed increases, the airload distributions become concentrated on the front part of the disk. Fluctuations in the loading indicate self-BVIs within each rotor, and blade-crossover events and rotor-to-rotor BVIs between the coaxial upper and lower rotors. Principal BVI events are identified in the well-captured wake structures by the 8th-order TENO reconstruction scheme. Self-BVIs on all rotors reduce in strength as the forward speed increases, while rotor-to-rotor BVIs on the coaxial lower rotor increase in strength with the increasing forward speed. In the coaxial configuration, the wake of the upper rotor is induced to move backwards and downwards due to the exertion of the lower rotor wake. The wake of the coaxial lower rotor features the most complex flow nature among all rotors. At both advance ratios, the coaxial lower rotor experiences a parallel rotor-to-rotor BVI, causing highly impulsive loading fluctuations along the blade span.