Navier-Stokes Prediction of the Effect of the Skids on the Aerodynamics of Helicopter Fuselage in Forward Flight

Abstract

A series of three-dimensional Navier-Stokes computations were carried out with and without skids to investigate the influence of the skids on the flow field and aerodynamic forces acting on a helicopter fuselage in low Mach number forward flight under different pitch angles. All the numerical results presented in the paper were produced using multi-block structured grids and a finite volume approach. The computed aerodynamic forces were significantly improved with respect to their experimental counterparts by the inclusion of the skids in the computational model.