Future CFD Tools for Rotorcraft: a DLR-ONERA vision

Kurzfassung

The maturity of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for solving aerodynamic problems has become such that these tools are now widely used for rotorcraft design not only by research organizations but also by Helicopter Manufacturers. The virtual engineering by means of CFD has widely replaced wind tunnel testing within the design process of aircraft because CFD enables a rapid and lower cost assessment of different configurations and configurational optimizations. It is sometimes believed that CFD has reached its ultimate maturity and that no further effort in this discipline is required in the near future. As representatives of ONERA and DLR in the fields of rotorcraft, the authors intend to show that the former assumption is false and that future CFD tools do need further development and validation to establish CFD as a reliable and accurate tool covering all aspects of rotorcraft engineering.