MODELING THE DYNAMIC BEHAVIOR OF HELICOPTER ROTORThe aim of the thesis is the investigation and modeling of dynamic and aerodynamic behavior of helicopter rotor considering both inertial and aerodynamic forces and taking into account the elastic deformation of the blades. The proposed coupling algorithm allows the transient calculations with data exchange between the fluid and structure solvers at each time step.The particularity of this research is the use of an actuator line aerodynamic model, which represents the blade forces applied to the fluid as source terms. These source terms are distributed in the grid cells where the blade is located. Thus the rotation, flapping and torsion of the blade can be represented without any grid deformation. An advantage of the actuator line is that the simulation uses a reduced number of nodes, because the “wall” boundary conditions do not need to be modeled.The case of small experimental helicopter rotor is studied in forward flight. The fluid and structure solvers are coupled to calculate aerodynamic and dynamic behavior of the rotor. For this purpose, a loosely coupling serial staggered algorithm is applied. The iterative calculations are controlled by specially developed code. At the beginning of each iteration, this code calculates and distributes the source terms in the fluid domain. At the end of the time step, the code runs the structural solver to execute a single time step. This solver calculates the blade displacement under aerodynamic, elastic and inertial forces, and the results are returned to the fluid solver. The calculated blade displacements serve as reference in the next fluid step to distribute the source terms. The calculation stops when the convergence criteria are met.In order to validate the simulated case, measurements are carried on in the wind tunnel. The power and aerodynamic thrust of the rotor are measured. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is used to obtain the velocity field around the rotor. Phase locked measurement in azimuth planes enabled to reconstruct 3D flow field. The comparison between numerical results and experiments shows good agreement and permits to validate the proposed coupling method.
