Optical Measurements of Helicopter Rotor Flows

Kurzfassung

The focus of the presentation was on the technical aspects and challenges of applying PIV and BOS to study large-scale rotor wakes on free-flying helicopters. Example results were shown for each measurement system to illustrate the measurement capabilities. This is the first time that large-scale PIV and BOS were applied to study the wake of a free flying model helicopter in ground effect, the first time that PIV was combined with BOS for full-scale out-of-the-lab rotor wake measurements, and the first time that PIV was applied on a free-flying full-scale helicopter.