Aerodynamic Shape Optimization of Hovering Rotor Blades Using a NLFD Approach

Optimisation of aspects of rotor blades in forward flight

“…This was not the case on the aerodynamics front due to the lack of efficient and accurate modelling techniques (Celi, 1999;Ganguli, 2004) although some progress was also made (Ganguli, 2004). Nevertheless, several authors (Celi, 1999;Walsh, 1991;Le Pape and Beaumier, 2005;Imiela, 2009;Glaz et al, 2008Glaz et al, , 2009Tatossian et al, 2008;Allen et al, 2010) have attempted to devise a variety of optimisation techniques. However, these methods were limited either by their efficiency or the accuracy of the results; reason being that high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are necessary to accurately capture the effects of design changes, especially for rotor aerodynamics and a number of CFD solutions are required for the process with each calculation taking substantial computational time.…”

“…Glaz et al (2008Glaz et al ( , 2009) used non-gradient surrogatebased optimisation for vibration reduction of a BO-105 rotor. Tatossian et al (2008) took a different approach to shape optimisation of hovering rotors, improving the adverse transonic flow effects at tip Mach numbers of 0.85 and above. They used a discrete adjoint-based aerodynamic optimisation algorithm based on a non-linear frequency domain approach and employed control theory to modify the shape interactively.…”