ROTORCRAFT INTERACTIONAL AERODYNAMICS CALCULATIONS WITH FAST VORTEX/FAST PANEL METHODS

A Comprehensive Hierarchical Aeromechanics Rotorcraft Model, (CHARM), incorporating fast vortex and fast panel methods for modeling complete rotorcraft has been developed and applied to the problems of rotor/wake/body interaction, wind tunnel wall interference, and ground effect. Sample calculations are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the fast methods in these modeling applications. Correlations with test data are described that illustrate the performance of the analysis in capturing measured values of average rotor performance, rotor-induced fuselage loading, and wake geometry associated with interactional aerodynamics phenomena. Results suggest that these fast methods can provide good accuracy for a wide variety of key interactional aerodynamics problems at computation times far less than finite volume/finite difference (FV/FD) CFD analyses.