Numerical Simulation of Rotor-Fuselage Aerodynamic Interaction Using an Unstructured Overset Mesh Technique

Abstract

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.