Overview of RCAS Capabilities, Validations, and Rotorcraft Applications

This paper presents an overview of the Rotorcraft Comprehensive Analysis System (RCAS) capabilities, recent enhancements, and validations and also demonstrates RCAS' application to practical rotorcraft problems. More than 10 years have passed since a similar paper was presented. During this time RCAS has been continually enhanced and there have been several significant developments. This paper summarizes these developments, which include new structural elements and improvement of exiting ones, addition of new wake and airloads options, addition of coupling with external wake modules, expansion of coupling with CFD modules, and development of a graphical user interface. This paper surveys and adds to the body of RCAS validation, which has greatly expanded since the last paper. RCAS validations now include detailed work on RCAS' vortex wake models, blade element momentum inflow models, and RCAS/CFD coupling capabilities to name a few. By summarizing RCAS' capabilities, recent developments, and validations, while also demonstrating RCAS applications, this paper provides the rotorcraft technical community with an up-to-date and consolidated resource on the state of RCAS comprehensive analysis.