• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 2009

To numerically simulate aerodynamics of rotor-airframe interaction in a rigorous manner, we need to solve the Navier-Stokes system for a rotor-airframe combination in a single computational domain. This imposes a computational burden since rotating blades and a stationary body have to be simultaneously dealt with. An efficient alternative is a momentum source method in which the action of rotor is approximated as momentum source in a stationary mesh system built around the airframe. This makes the simulation much easier. The magnitude of the momentum source is usually evaluated by the blade element theory, which often results in a poor accuracy. In the present work, we evaluate the momentum source from the simulation data by using the Navier-Stokes equations only for a rotor system. Using this data, we simulated the time-averaged steady rotor-airfame interaction and developed the unsteady rotor-airframe interaction. Computations were carried out for the simplified rotor-airframe model (the Georgia Tech configuration) and the results were compared with experimental data. The results were in good agreement with experimental data, suggesting that the present approach is a usefull method for rotor-airframe interaction analysis.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.125-133
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• 2009

To numerically simulate aerodynamics of rotor-airframe interaction in a rigorous manner, we need to solve the Navier-Stokes system for a rotor-airframe combination as a whole. This often imposes a serious computational burden since rotating blades and a stationary body have to be simultaneously dealt with. An efficient alternative is to adopt a momentum source method in which the action of rotor is approximated as momentum source over a rotor disc plane in a stationary computational domain. This makes the simulation much simpler. For unsteady simulation, the instantaneous momentum sources are assigned only to a portion of disk plane corresponding to blade passage. The momentum source is obtained by using blade element theory with dynamic inflow model. Computations are carried out for the simple rotor-airframe model (the Georgia Tech model) and the results of the simulation are compared with those of the full Navier-Stokes simulation with moving mesh system for rotor and with experimental data. It is shown that the present simulation yields results as good as those of the full Navier-Stokes simulation.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.24-25
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• 2006

An unstructured mesh method has been developed for the simulation of steady and time-accurate flows around helicopter rotors. A dynamic and quasi-unsteady solution-adaptive mesh refinement technique was adopted for the enhancement of the solution accuracy in the local region of interest involving highly vortical flows. Applications were made to the 2-D blade-vortex interaction aerodynamics and the 3-D rotor blades in hover. The interaction between the rotor and the airframe in forward flight was investigated by introducing an overset mesh technique.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.8-13
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• 2007

Unsteady flow simulation for the tiltrotor Smart UAV configuration was performed to investigate the powered rotor wake effect on aerodynamic characteristics. Calculations were performed to simulate various flow conditions based on different flight modes including hover, conversion and cruise. Three-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equation code were used for flow calculation and Chimera grid technique overlapping individually generated grids was employed. A dynamic grid method was adopted in simulation of the rotating blades. Flow calculations were also conducted for the un-powered case. Aerodynamic interaction between the rotor and airframe was investigated comparing three data sets from the un-powered, powered, and isolated rotor cases.