Large Eddy Simulation of the tip flow of a helicopter rotor in hover

The rotor tip vortex plays an important role in rotorcraft aerodynamics where it has a  direct impact  on  rotor performance, rotor and airframe vibration, flow induced noise, and rotorcraft handling. Despite the importance of this flow feature, its topology, dynamics, and turbulence characteristics are far from being well understood.
 

A LES-RANS approach is being developed for simulating the flow where the entire free-wake system of the rotor would be simulated using RANS and LES used only in a limited region which surrounds the blade tip and the tip vortex. The CPU requirements for these simulations are expected to be enormous making this study feasible only on a massively parallel computer. It is expected that the LES computation will provide accurate information about the dynamics of the tip vortex flow which will help in the design of experiments and development and validation of turbulence models.

Personnel: Reza Ghias