Three Rotor Hub Flow Prediction Workshops (2016–2020): What Did We Learn and What’s Next?

The ‘Rotor Hub Flow Prediction Workshops’ have been productive collaborations between experimental and computational efforts in the important area of high-Reynolds number model testing of rotor hubs and associated complex interactional aerodynamics in the long-age wake as relevant to current and future rotorcraft. As such the hub flow workshops have joined the ranks of past successful collaborations such as the UH-60 Airloads and HART-II workshops. This paper begins by describing the basic physics of rotor hub flows and gives a brief summary of recent water-tunnel test campaigns. Following, the evolution of the hub flow workshops is summarized, with emphasis on the productive interactions between experimentalists and computational participants. A compilation of computational blind comparison results against measured data for all three workshops thus far is presented. Challenges associated with uncertainties in both experiments and computations and their effect on quantitative comparisons are discussed. In particular, emphasis is given to the “lessons learned” on both sides and an outlook on remaining challenges and next research steps in the area of rotor hub flows is provided.