Computation of Helicopter Fuselage Aerodynamics Using Navier-Stokes CFD Methods

Kurzfassung

This paper describes the research activities conducted by the European Research consortium HELIFUSE during the first of this Brite-EuRaM project. The work consisted of Navier-Stokes computations on pre-selected test cases taken out of an extensive wind tunnel test programme at the ONERA F1 wind tunnel. The calculations were performed by three national research institutes (CIRA, DLR, ONERA), three helicopter manufacturers (Agusta, Eurocopter, GKN-Westland), one software company (Simulog) and two universities (DTU, IAG). The aim of the work was to simulate the complex flowfield around the fuselage of the wind tunnel tests. Blind test calculations and wind tunnel data were in very good agreement for the surface pressure distribution, but showed some discrepancies in the drag prediction accuracy. In order to understand the reasons for this scatter, two additional computational tests were performed: 1.) computation of a fuselage test case with one Navier-Stokes code on all the different structured grids; 2.) computations by all the structured Navier-Stokes codes on one common grid. These results have reduced the large scatter in the drag data from CFD analysis, although some discrepancies still exists.