Abstract
A panel/vortex particle hybrid method is coupled with a computational structure dynamics code to predict helicopter rotor loads. The rotor blade surfaces and near wakes are modeled by the panel method, while the far wake is modeled by resorting to the vortex particles method. A fast summation method is introduced to accelerate the evolution of particle–particle-induced velocity and its derivative as well as panel–particle interactions. The developed vortex particle method code is coupled with the multibody code MBDyn to predict the rotor airloads. Numerical validations are carried, out and the results are compared with the experiments and simulation results in the literature.
Highlights
Rotorcrafts are characterized by strong interactions between the slender blades’ structural dynamics and the unsteady aerodynamics environment; among them, the blade vortex interaction (BVI) causes significant noise and vibration problems
The viscous diffusion term is accounted for by using the Particle Strength Exchange (PSE) method, which approximates the Laplacian operator with an integral operator with a Gaussian kernel ησij, obtaining higher accuracy compared with numerical differentiation: υ ∇2 α i =
The lifting surfaces were modeled by vortex panels with constant dipole and source strength
Summary
Rotorcrafts are characterized by strong interactions between the slender blades’ structural dynamics and the unsteady aerodynamics environment; among them, the blade vortex interaction (BVI) causes significant noise and vibration problems. Navier–Stokes (RANS) or large-eddy simulations (LES) for rotorcraft analysis usually make use of the overset mesh methodology; provide a high-fidelity simulation; and are capable of predicting the transonic flow (shock wave) effects, separated flow, and reverse flow phenomena These grid-based methods may suffer from excessive dissipation due to the numerical discretization unless a fine grid system and advanced meshing techniques such as adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) that allows us to adaptively refine the discretization around key regions of high vorticity are adopted. In the work of Alvarez and Ning [23], the load distribution was calculated by resorting to the blade element method (BEM) and was used to derive the circulation along the blade in order to perform all the computations using FMM, to model the lifting surfaces using embedded vortex particles, and to obtain an O( N ).
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