Performance Optimization of Helicopter Rotor in Hover Based on CFD Simulation

Abstract

An optimization method of helicopter rotor hovering performance is proposed, which is mainly carried out by means of CFD simulation. This method can be used to obtain the rotation speed of any blade model under the designed hovering tension through several iterations, and then, the tension, torque, power, and power load of the rotor under the rotation speed can be obtained. By comparing different blade pitch, radius, twist, and chord length, the blade parameters at the highest power load can be selected. A series of new rotor models are obtained by changing the model parameters on the basis of C-T rotor. NASA has carried out a lot of experiments on the C-T rotor model and published detailed experimental reports. The transient simulation is carried out by the embedded grid method.