Numerical simulation of different rotor designs in hover and forward flight

Abstract

This paper presents numerical simulations of different rotor designs using the HMB3 solver of Glasgow University. The PSP blade with a swept-tapered tip, the Langley Baseline blade with a rectangular planform and the Langley BERP blade with an advanced tip shape were studied. Firstly, the three blades were examined in hover. The integrated loads were compared with experiments and show very good agreement for each of the blade designs. The effect of anhedral in hover was investigated and was found to be more beneficial for the BERP-like design, than the other blades. The PSP blade was also simulated in forward flight at three thrust coefficients. The advancing and retreating blade surface pressures were extracted and found to follow experimental data obtained using pressure transducers. The predictions for the simulated cases demonstrate the ability of the CFD method to accurately predict the performance of rotors regardless of planform geometry, or design complexity