Studies on Rotorcraft Integrated Design and Evaluation at DLR - First Results

Abstract

The automation of the rotorcraft design process is a topic of growing interest among research organisations. Another important issue in this context is the evaluation of proposed designs. To support the design process and the evaluation task, an integrated rotorcraft design and evaluation toolbox covering the conceptual and preliminary design level is developed in the DLR internal project RIDE (Rotorcraft Integrated Design and Evaluation). This paper describes the software toolbox and presents first results of the individual modules as well as lessons learned from the integration into a working process chain. The fully automated process chain comprises a basic sizing, geometry generation and structural design as well as aerodynamic and flight mechanical evaluations. The various modules have been integrated using a commercial software framework combined with a data exchange model developed in-house.