Helicopter Rotor Disk and Blade Element Comparisons

This study performs comparisons of blade element and rotor map models under identical operational conditions to assess the significance of the increased sophistication of the blade element models on simulation fidelity and to weigh the benefits against the additional cost associated with the increased computational requirements. The effects of the varying levels of sophistication of each element of a rotorcraft simulation on the fidelity of the simulation in different bandwidths are investigated. The comparison of trim, performance, static stability, transient response and frequency response are used to evaluate the models. Finally, the simulation models are integrated with a manned flight simulator and assessed by pilots. For the static analysis, the blade element model predictions correlate with the flight test results slightly better than the rotormap model. However, for the dynamics test, especially pilot evaluation, the blade element model shows significantly better results than the rotormap model.