OpenMDAO/NDARC Framework for Assessing Performance Impact of Rotor Technology Integration

A rotorcraft design and analysis environment was created by wrapping NASA Design and Analysis of Rotorcraft (NDARC) within OpenMDAO. This environment allows for multiple executions of NDARC upon a number of unique design cases in rapid succession without the necessity of a user to recreate individual input files for each design case and to manually pass data between analysis software. To exercise the utility of this framework, an active rotor technology power model was created and applied to multiple NDARC analyses using this framework. The power model correlates induced power and profile power model parameters to the power supplied to the active controls technology. The impact of inserting active rotor technology as an upgrade to a notional 16,000lb helicopter design is assessed by using the framework to conduct NDARC performance analysis at varying levels of active controls power settings. Performance gains in power required and aircraft lift-to-drag ratio are shown. The OpenMDAO/NDARC framework proves to be a robust and powerful environment. Suggestions are made for other uses and improvements to increase the scope and fidelity of the framework.