Design Space Exploration for Future Rotorcraft Applications

Modern needs for rotorcraft are becoming increasingly stringent, with customers demanding rotorcraft that can fly faster, carry more cargo, have larger ranges, and to do it all more economically than in the past, such as the Joint Multi-Role, Joint-Heavy Lift, DARPA VTOL X-Plane, and the NASA Large Civil Tiltrotor. These advanced mission requirements are pushing us to the boundaries of the capabilities of conventional helicopter designs, and beyond, necessitating experimentation and renewed interest in unconventional and advanced concepts. While there exists a long, established historical database of conventional designs, little or none exists for some of the more advanced concepts. Combined with the rapid pace of technological progress, this creates a need for accurate and flexible tools at the conceptual and preliminary design levels. To this end, CONDOR, an open-source rotorcraft performance analysis and sizing tool, was developed. It enables rapid analysis, comparison, and design space exploration across widely differing configurations. Its openness and flexibility allow easy modification for adding in additional capabilities or integration within larger design loops, and it is well-suited to deployment in a cloud-based distributed computing environment and within ad-hoc "virtual clusters", allowing the harnessing of large amounts of distributed computing power with minimal cost.