Hovering rotor perfomances: a panel method coupled with a navier-stokes method

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Hovering rotor perfomances: a panel method coupled with a navier-stokes method

Haertig, J. / Gnemmi, P. / Johe, C.

The French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis (ISL) is involved in aerodynamic research in order to predict the performance of hovering rotors. An original approach is proposed to deal with this challenge: a full potential computation (PARSEC) is coupled with a Navier-Stokes computation (TASCflow). The full potential computation is used to predict the wake of the multi-bladed rotor and its aerodynamic coefficients. It also provides necessary boundary conditions on the nodes of the small volume surrounding one blade for Navier-Stokes computations. Before applying this method to a new design of blades it is reasonable to examine the accuracy of this approach for classical rotor blades. Visualization of the tip vortex path and measurements of aerodynamic coefficients are carried out on the ISL rotor model (NACA0012 rectangular twisted blade) for many rotation speeds and blade tip incidence angles. PARSEC and TASCflow numerical results are compared with experimental ones obtained on this rotor model. A good agreement on rotor performance is found, so that new blade designs can be studied in the future with this method.