Aerodynamic predictions of the ship-helicopter dynamic interface with a dual-solver hybrid CFD methodology

Abstract

Characterization of ship-helicopter dynamic interface (DI) aerodynamics is a challenging problem that must be addressed for safe naval helicopter operations. Current computational methods of simulating the DI employ highly expensive unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (uRANS) techniques that exceed the resources available for most applications. Newly-developed dual-solver hybrid computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques permit the resolution of the fundamental physics in the DI at up to 85% less computational costs compared to traditional methods through a reduction of the uRANS mesh size, faster initialization of the flow field, and decoupling of the ship and helicopter aerodynamic simulations. While detailed experimental data is not yet available, good qualitative agreement between fuselage loads in simulated DI scenarios with flight test vehicle accelerations is observed.