Experimental and Numerical Evaluation on the Helicopter Rotor Response under the Crash Impact

Abstract

When the helicopter rotor collides, the relevant impact load on the blade will be transmitted to the fuselage though its hub. In this paper, collision analysis of the rotor blades under hard impact is conducted by both experimental and numerical approach. To obtain reliable test results, the collision of the rotating blades will be simulated by drop and whirl tower tests. UH-60A main rotor blade is selected and designed for each experiment. For the drop situation, the maximum indentation during the crash impact is evaluated experimentally and nu-merically using ANSYS LS-DYNA. In addition, the behavior of the rotor blade and the tendency of an impact force in terms of time and displacement under 2 drop tests are compared. Finally, the rotor blade and hub design of Mach-scaled UH-60 rotor blade is conducted for the whirl tower tests. In the future, the whirl tower test will be conducted for hover of both 4-blade and one-blade-out condition at Seoul National University Rotor Test Stand (SNURTS). The loads acting on the hub are measured and correlated against those predicted numerically.