As part of a center-wide activity at NASA Langley Research Center to develop multidisciplinary design procedures by accounting for discipline interactions, a performance design optimization procedure is developed. The procedure optimizes the aerodynamic performance of rotor blades by selecting the point of taper initiation, root chord, taper ratio, and maximum twist which minimize hover horsepower while not degrading forward flight performance. The procedure uses HOVT (a strip theory momentum analysis) to compute the horse power required for hover and the comprehensive helicopter analysis program CAMRAD to compute the horsepower required for forward flight and maneuver. The optimization algorithm consists of the general purpose optimization program CONMIN and approximate analyses. Sensitivity analyses consisting of derivatives of the objective function and constraints are carried out by forward finite differences. The procedure is applied to a test problem which is an analytical model of a wind tunnel model of a utility rotor blade.
Performance Optimization of Helicopter Rotor Blades
1991
22 pages
Report
Keine Angabe
Englisch
Aircraft , Test Facilities & Equipment , Aerodynamic characteristics , Design analysis , Flight characteristics , Helicopters , Horizontal flight , Mathematical models , Optimization , Rotary wings , Wind tunnel tests , Algorithms , Degradation , Horsepower , Hovering , Momentum , Tapering , Wind tunnel models
Performance optimization of helicopter rotor blades
NTRS | 1991
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