The Importance Of Aerodynamics On Dynamics

Every helicopter analyst would say that aerodynamics has a profound influence on dynamics (an influence that goes beyond the obvious aspects of forcing function, damping source, or aeroelastic coupling). Yet, despite this acknowledgement, the vital links between dynamics and aerodynamics are often missing from research and analysis efforts. In this paper, we examine these links and discuss several examples for which the aerodynamics influences the dynamics in unexpected ways.