Title: Application of vorticity confinement to rotor wake simulations

Authors: Michel Costes; Thomas Renaud; Benoit Rodriguez; Gabriel Reboul

Addresses: ONERA, The French Aerospace Lab, 8 rue des Vertugadins, F 92190 Meudon, France. ' ONERA, The French Aerospace Lab, 8 rue des Vertugadins, F 92190 Meudon, France. ' ONERA, The French Aerospace Lab, 8 rue des Vertugadins, F 92190 Meudon, France. ' ONERA, The French Aerospace Lab, F 92320 Châtillon, France

Abstract: The VC2 vorticity confinement technique introduced by Steinhoff for vortex dominated flows is presented. After a brief description of the formulation and of its theoretical developments, the method is applied to the simulation of helicopter rotor wakes, focusing on two configurations: the rotor in hover, for which the flow field is mainly driven by the wake characteristics, and the rotor in low-speed descent flight where BVI noise is created. The results obtained show the efficiency of the approach, which provides wake predictions of the same or even better quality as higher-order methods.

Keywords: helicopter rotor wakes; vorticity confinement; hovering flight; descent flight; blade-vortex interaction; rotors; helicopters; vortex flows; simulation; wake predictions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESMS.2012.044848

International Journal of Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation, 2012 Vol.4 No.1/2, pp.102 - 112

Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

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