Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Rotor Aerodynamics In Ground Effect with Inclined Planes

In this work, the ground effect phenomena for a rotary wing is investigated both numerically and experimentally. For this purpose, a test setup with scaled model helicopter rotor is established. The experimental setup give the opportunity to investigate the rotor aerodynamics both with inclined ground and without any inclination. The thrust and torque values are obtained for different rotational speeds with constant collective pitch. The effects of the inclined ground and the effects of the ground with extreme proximity scenarios are tested. The proper trends of the performance parameters in these scenarios are obtained. For comparisons with the experiments and to investigate the rotor downwash characteristics, Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations are also performed. To model the rotating helicopter blade, Single Moving Reference Frame Method (SMRF) is used. In this method, the blade and the mesh around the blade are kept still and rotational velocity is defined at each cell in the domain. With the CFD results, the rotor downwash flow field near the ground is studied and the performance changes in the ground effect are explained