BENEFIT STUDIES FOR ROTOR WITH ACTIVE TWIST CONTROL USING WEAK FLUID-STRUCTURE COUPLING

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the numerical benefit studies concerning a rotor with implemented active twist control technology which was defined in the framework of the European FRIENDCOPTER project. The objective is to demonstrate the potential improvement of the active twist rotor with respect to rotor aerodynamic performance, noise and vibration reduction. The numerical method applied for the benefit studies is based on a weak coupling procedure between the DLR rotor simulation code S4 and the DLR Navier-Stokes flow solver FLOWer. In this study, the weak coupling approach was applied to two steady forward flight cases at advance ratios of 0.318 and 0.378. The numerical results showed that applying optimized active twist control laws, the vibration and power consumption level of the active twist rotor can be reduced substantially in both cases.