Helicopter Rotor Airloads Prediction, Using CFD and Flight Test Measurement in Hover Flight

An implicit unsteady upwind solver including a mesh motion approach was applied to simulate a helicopter including body, main rotor and tail rotor in hover flight. the discretization was based on a second order finite volume approach with fluxes given by the roe's scheme. discretization of geometric conservation laws (gcl) was devised in such a way that the three-dimensional flows on arbitrary moving grids could be solved. the accurate geometric representation together with the flexibility required for grid displacement was achieved by using a tetrahedral grid. first, the numerical methodology was validated through experimental test data; then, our supposed helicopter configuration was utilized. at the same time, the main rotor loading measurements were done through flight tests. two methods of moving reference frame (mrf) and viscous/inviscid dynamic mesh were compared resulting in robustness of dynamic mesh approach. ultimately, our calculations yielded valid solutions to the blade loading and wake structure.