Computation of Helicopter Fuselage Aerodynamics Using Navier-Stokes CFD Methods

Abstract

This paper describes the research activities conducted hy the European Research consortium HELIFUSE during the first vear of this Brite-EuRaM uroiect. The work consisted of Navier-Stokes comnutatinns on nre-selected test cases taken . " out of a n extensive wind tunnel test program a t the ONERA F l wind tunnel. The calculations were performed by three national research institutes (CIRA, DLR, ONERA), three helicopter manufacturers (Agusta, Eurocopter, GKN-Westland), one software company (Sirnulog) and two universities (DTU, IAG). The aim of the work was to simulate the complex Rowfield around the fuselage of the wind tunnel tests. Rlind test calculations and wind tunnel data were in very good agreement for the surface pressure distribution, hut showed some discrepancies in the drag prediction accuracy. I n order to understand the reasons for this scatter, two additional computational tests were performed: 1) computation of a fuselage test case with one Navier-Stokes code on all the different structured grids; 2) computations by all the structured Navier-Stokes codes on one common grid. These results have reduced the large scatter in the drag data from CFD analysis, although some discrepancy still exists.

An efficient method for helicopter fuselage shape optimization

“…The ROE-MUSCL spatial discretization scheme is chosen to obtain a good shock resolution, and the implicit LU-SGS temporal discretization is selected to accelerate the convergence step (Hu et al , 2022). Different RANS flow solvers are evaluated to compare with computed results and experimental data for isolated fuselage drag coefficients (Costes et al , 2000; Renaud et al , 2008). The CFD method with flow solver has been used to calculate the fuselage drag of an ANAST helicopter; the CFD results are found to be in fair agreement with the test data (Kusyumov et al , 2012; Batrakov et al , 2015).…”

Experimental Study of Helicopter Fuselage Drag

“…Costes et al [25] presented results of pressure distribution and force data obtained in the ONERA F1 wind tunnel (WT) for three simplified fuselage configurations of a helicopter up to real flight Reynolds numbers (from 6 to 60 million) based on fuselage lenght. The data were then compared against numerical results.…”