Full-Aircraft UH-60M Loads and Performance Correlations at Level and Maneuvering Flight Conditions with HELIOS-RCAS

The Sikorsky BLACK HAWK® is the primary medium lift helicopter for the U.S. Army performing a wide range of missions that encompass Air Assault, MEDEVAC, CSAR, Command and Control, and VIP transport. The Multimission UH-60M is one of the latest in the BLACK HAWK helicopter product family, more capable, more survivable, more maintainable, more powerful, and more effective than its predecessors. In previous efforts, a high-fidelity CFDCSD based full-aircraft trim and maneuvering simulation methodology was developed and applied to model both coaxial aircraft and single main/tail rotor configurations (Refs. 1-4). The CFD solver is based on the CREATE™-AV HELIOS toolset (Ref. 5) and the CSD solver is based on Rotorcraft Comprehensive Analysis System (RCAS) (Ref. 6). The current paper further enhances the previously developed 6-DOF CFD-CSD full-aircraft trim methodology to robustly handle the trim solution for the single main/tail rotor configurations. The enhanced methodology was applied to rotor control loads and aircraft performance calculations at both steady level flight and aggressive Angle-of-Bank (AOB) turn maneuver conditions, including comparisons with available flight test data. The simulation results demonstrate a consistent correlation with flight test, including at stall conditions. The high-fidelity full-aircraft CFDCSD simulation approach provides an efficient, accurate and robust methodology for aircraft performance, control loads and stall boundary predictions to support advanced design at early stage.