• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2010

Numerical simulation of unsteady flows around helicopters was conducted to investigate the aerodynamic interaction of main rotor and other components such as fuselage and tail rotor. For this purpose, a three-dimensional inviscid flow solver has been developed based on unstructured meshes. An overset mesh technique was used to describe the relative motion between the main rotor, and other components. As the application of the present method, calculations were made for the rotor-fuselage aerodynamic interaction of the ROBIN (ROtor Body INteraction) configuration and for a complete UH-60 helicopter configuration consisted of main rotor, fuselage, and tail rotor. Comparison of the computational results was made with measured time-averaged and instantaneous fuselage surface pressure distributions for the ROBIN configuration and thrust distribution and available experimental data for the UH-60 configuration. It is demonstrated that the present method is efficient and robust for the simulation of complete rotorcraft configurations.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.352-357
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• 2012

The ground resonance instability of a helicopter with bearingless main rotor hub were investigated. The ground resonance instability is caused by an interaction between the blade lag motion and hub inplane motion. This instability occurs when the helicopter is on the ground and is important for soft-inplane rotors where the rotating lag mode frequency is less than the rotor rotational speed. For the analysis, the bearingless rotor was composed of blades, flexbeam, torque tube, damper, shear restrainer, and pitch links. The fuselage was modeled as a mass-damper-spring system having natural frequencies in roll and pitch motions. The rotor-fuselage coupling equations are derived in non-rotating frame to consider the rotor and fuselage equations in the same frame. The ground resonance instabilities for three cases where are without lead-lag damper and fuselage damping, with lead-lag damper and without fuselage damping, and finally with lead-lag damper and fuselage damping. There is no ground resonance instability in the only rotor-fuselage configuration with lead-lag damper and fuselage damping.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.7
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• pp.629-636
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• 2010

This study is to investigate the aerodynamic effects of the Rotor-Fuselage Interactions in forward flight, and is conducted by using an improved time-marching free-wake panel method. To resolve the instability caused by the close proximity of the wake to the blade surface, the field velocity approach is added to the prior unsteady panel code. This modified method is applied to the ROBIN(ROtor Body Interaction) problem, which had been conducted experimentally in NASA. The calculated results, pressure distribution on fuselage surface and induced inflow ratio without and with the rotor, are compared with the experimental results. The developed code shows not only very accurate prediction of the aerodynamic characteristics for the rotor-fuselage interaction problem but also the rotor wake development.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.11-21
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• 2005

A three-dimensional parallel Euler flow solver has been developed for the simulation of unsteady rotor-fuselage interaction aerodynamics on unstructured meshes. In order to handle the relative motion between the rotor and the fuselage, the flow field was divided into two zones, a moving zone rotating with the blades and a stationary zone containing the fuselage. A sliding mesh algorithm was developed for the convection of the flow variables across the cutting boundary between the two zones. A quasi-unsteady mesh adaptation technique was adopted to enhance the spatial accuracy of the solution and to better resolve the wake. A low Mach number pre-conditioning method was implemented to relieve the numerical difficulty associated with the low-speed forward flight. Validations were made by simulating the flows around the Georgia Tech configuration and the ROBIN fuselage. It was shown that the present method is efficient and robust for the prediction of complicated unsteady rotor-fuselage aerodynamic interaction phenomena.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.519-529
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• 2010

In the present study, unsteady calculations have been performed to simulate flows around a UH-60A full configuration including main rotor, fuselage, and tail rotor. A flow solver developed for helicopter aerodynamic analysis was used for the simulation of the complete helicopter in high-speed and low-speed forward flight. Unsteady vibratory loads on the main rotor blades were compared with flight test and other calculated data for the assessment of the present flow solver. Aerodynamic interaction of the three components of the helicopter was investigated by comparing with the results of main-rotor-alone, main rotor and fuselage, and tail-rotor-alone configurations. It was found that the existence of the fuselage has an effect on the normal force distribution of the main rotor by varying downwash distribution on the rotor disc, and tip vortices trailed from the main rotor strongly interact with the tail-rotor.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.266-267
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• 2003

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.481-485
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• 2013

Rotor wake causes unsteady aerodynamics of rotor blade. So, accurate prediction of wake is very important and vortex method is good solution for this problem. Aerodynamic force of the rotor blade is calculated by potential panel method and the rotor wake is simulated by vortex particle method. The vortex particle method is easier to treat wake-body interaction and has better performance to expect the effect of ground and fuselage interaction. Rotor in hovering and forward flight condition is simulated through these methods. Thrust and surface pressure of rotor are compared with experiment data.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.47 no.7
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• pp.489-498
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• 2019

The airloads and structural loads of Light Civil Helicopter (LCH) rotor are investigated using a loose CFD/CSD coupling. The structural dynamics model for LCH 5-bladed rotor cwith elastomeric bearing and inter-bladed damper is constructed using CAMRAD-II. Either isolated rotor or rotor-fuselage model is used to identify the effect of the fuselage on the aeromechanics behavior at a cruise speed of 0.28. The fuselage effect is shown to be marginal on the aeromechanics predictions of LCH rotor, though the effect can be non-negligible for the tail structure due to the prevailing root vortices strengthened by the fuselage upwash. A lifting-line based comprehensive analysis is also conducted to verify the CFD/CSD coupled analysis. The comparison study shows that the comprehensive analysis predictions are generally in good agreements with CFD/CSD coupled results. However, the predicted comprehensive analysis results underestimate peak-to-peak values of blade section airloads and elastic motions due to the limitation of unsteady aerodynamic predictions. Particularly, significant discrepancies appear in the structural loads with apparent phase differences.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.12
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• pp.1087-1096
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• 2011

The purpose of current study is to develop and verify the newly developed solver for analyzing rotor flow using the open-source code. The algorithm of standard solver, OpenFOAM, is improved to analyze the rotor inflow with and without fuselage. For the calculation of the rotor thrust, the virtual blade method based on the blade element method is employed. The inflow velocities on the rotor disk used to specify the effective angle of attack, have been included in the solver. The results of the current rotor inflow analysis are verified by comparing with other experimental and numerical results. It was confirmed that the modified solver provides satisfactory results for rotor-fuselage interaction problem.