TY - JOUR
T1 - A review of 60 years of rotor hub drag and wake physics
T2 - 1954-2014
AU - Reich, David
AU - Shenoy, Rajiv
AU - Smith, Marilyn
AU - Schmitz, Sven
N1 - Funding Information:
The Georgia Tech authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Office of Naval Research under grant N0001409-1-1019, entitled "Deconstructing Hub Drag," and the associated technical monitors, John Kinzer and Judah Milgram. The Penn State authors' efforts were supported under VLRCOE task 1.2 at the Pennsylvania State University. Tom Maier, Mahendra Bhagwat (AFDD), and Judah Milgram (Navy) are the technical POCs. This research is partially funded by the Government under agreement no. W911W6-11-2-0011. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Government.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The American Helicopter Society.
PY - 2016/4
Y1 - 2016/4
N2 - The rotor hub system is recognized as one of the primary contributors to helicopter parasite drag and is one of the inherent limiters to maximum helicopter forward-flight speed. Despite its importance for the performance of rotorcraft, complex bluff-body flows of the rotor hub have received only intermittent attention since the first studies in the 1950s. This work presents a comprehensive review of experimental and computational research over the past 60 years on rotor hub flows and describes the challenges associated with component and interference drag, effect of the hub near wake on pylon and fuselage flows, and the long-age wake of rotor hubs at high Reynolds number with the associated size and strength of flow structures that interact with the empennage. Computational technology is assessed as an emerging design tool for hub/pylon design, and, with its ability to capture downstream flow unsteadiness, empennage/tail surface aeroelasticity and controllability. The work concludes with recommendations of future experimental and computational evaluations to advance the community's understanding of rotor hub flows and mitigation of its adverse effects for future rotorcraft.
AB - The rotor hub system is recognized as one of the primary contributors to helicopter parasite drag and is one of the inherent limiters to maximum helicopter forward-flight speed. Despite its importance for the performance of rotorcraft, complex bluff-body flows of the rotor hub have received only intermittent attention since the first studies in the 1950s. This work presents a comprehensive review of experimental and computational research over the past 60 years on rotor hub flows and describes the challenges associated with component and interference drag, effect of the hub near wake on pylon and fuselage flows, and the long-age wake of rotor hubs at high Reynolds number with the associated size and strength of flow structures that interact with the empennage. Computational technology is assessed as an emerging design tool for hub/pylon design, and, with its ability to capture downstream flow unsteadiness, empennage/tail surface aeroelasticity and controllability. The work concludes with recommendations of future experimental and computational evaluations to advance the community's understanding of rotor hub flows and mitigation of its adverse effects for future rotorcraft.
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U2 - 10.4050/JAHS.61.022007
DO - 10.4050/JAHS.61.022007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84963705982
SN - 0002-8711
VL - 61
JO - Journal of the American Helicopter Society
JF - Journal of the American Helicopter Society
IS - 2
M1 - 022007
ER -