Coupling Mid-Fidelity Aerodynamics and Multibody Dynamics for the Aeroelastic Analysis of Rotary-Wing Vehicles

Abstract

A mid-fidelity aerodynamic solver based on the vortex particle method for wake modeling, DUST, is coupled through the partitioned multi-physics coupling library preCICE to a multibody dynamics code, MBDyn, to improve the accuracy of aeroelastic numerical analysis performed on rotary-wing vehicles. In this paper, the coupled tool is firstly validated by solving simple fixed-wing and rotary-wing problems from the open literature. The transient roll maneuver of a complete tiltrotor aircraft is then simulated, to show the capability of the coupled solver to analyze the aeroelasticity of complex rotorcraft configurations. Simulation results show the importance of the accurate representation of rotary wing aerodynamics provided by the vortex particle method for loads evaluation, aeroelastic stability assessment, and analysis of transient maneuvers of aircraft configurations characterized by complex interactional aerodynamics. The limited computational effort required by the mid-fidelity aerodynamic approach represents an effective trade-off in obtaining fast and accurate solutions that can be used for the preliminary design of novel rotary-wing vehicle configurations.

Validation of a Mid-fidelity Numerical Approach for Wind Turbine Aerodynamics Characterization

“…The code is released under the open-source MIT license. The capabilities of the code have been quite extended in recent years and DUST has been also coupled to the open-source multibody solver MBDyn [35], also developed at Politecnico di Milano, enabling to perform aeroelastic analysis of complete rotorcraft configurations. The mathematical formulation of DUST relies on an integral boundary element formulation of the aerodynamic problem and VPM of the wakes.…”

Design of a Tiltrotor Semi-Span Wind Tunnel Model for Whirl Flutter Investigations

“…This relatively simple model of the rotor aerodynamics is considered adequate in the tiltrotor aeromechanics literature for whirl-flutter predictions [35]. In an ongoing investigation, higher fidelity aerodynamics based on an original implementation of the Vortex-Particle Method (VPM) presented in [36] and tightly coupled to the MBDyn multibody simulation is being developed.…”

Numerical Whirl–Flutter analysis of a tiltrotor semi-span wind tunnel model

“…The resulting model represents a low-fidelity description of the rotor aerodynamics; however, in the tiltrotor aeromechanics literature, it is considered adequate for Whirl-Flutter. Future investigation will also consider mid-fidelity aerodynamics, involving the Vortex-Particle Method (VPM) presented in [47].…”