Helicopter CFD Coupled with Flight Mechanics - Current Status and Future Perspectives

The development of High Performance Computing and CFD methods have evolved to the point where it is possible to simulate complete helicopter configurations with good accuracy. CFD methods have also been applied to problems such as rotor/fuselage and main/tail rotor interactions, performance studies in hover and forward flight, rotor design, etc. The GOAHEAD project is a good example of a coordinated effort to validate CFD for complex helicopter configurations. Nevertheless, current efforts are limited to steady flight and focus mainly on expanding the edges of the flight envelope. The present work tackles the problem of simulating manoeuvring flight in a CFD environment by integrating a multi-body grid motion method and the Helicopter Flight Mechanics (HFM) solver with CFD. After a discussion of previous works carried out on the subject and a description of the methods used, validation of CFD for ship airwake flow and rotorcraft flight at low advance ratio are presented. Finally, the results obtained for manoeuvring flight cases are presented and discussed