A computer program (referred to herein as PDP, Preliminary Design Program) for the conceptual and preliminary design and evaluation of ten Vertical-Take-Off-and-Landing (VTOL) aircraft configurations is presented. The ten configurations are: pure helicopter, thrust augmented helicopter, winged helicopter, compound helicopter, slowed rotor helicopter, stowed rotor compound helicopter, stopped rotor 'composite', stowed rotor composite, tilt rotor-prop VTOL, and tilt wing VTOL. The program was conceived thirty years ago within the Advanced Design Division of U.S. Army Aviation Laboratories, now the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, at Ft. Eustis, Va., as a decision making tool for evaluation of competing alternatives of future aircraft at the system and sub-system level. The program having been released by the Government, is presented here by three of the development team members still active in the field. The original PDP (which ran overnight in Fortran IV on large mainframe computers with batch processing), and an improved PDP version (operating on a PC with Windows 95 or 98 and a PC-compatible Fortran) are highlighted. Some thoughts are offered for the potential use of PDP for advanced VTOL designs. It is believed that PDP could be useful as an inexpensive first step for the definition of future military and commercial aircraft, as well as for student education in VTOL design. There are also lessons learned which are applicable to developers of similar codes in the future.
Computer program for the preliminary design and assessment of future VTOL configurations
1999
21 Seiten, 33 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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