Investigation on effects of time-frequency characteristics of ship airwake on helicopter flight characteristics

A conventional helicopter flight dynamics model, which can be coupled with ship airwake date, is developed in this study. In the method, the ship airwake data is obtained by the high-accuracy DES model, and a strategy which can transmit CFD data to the flight dynamics model is established based on the "one-way" coupling idea. Then, the SFS2 ship model and UH-60A helicopter are chosen as a combination to investigate the influences of the spatial and temporal characteristics of ship airwake from the aspects of control margins and unsteady level. The time-averaged simulation results show that for the counterclockwise-rotor helicopter, although pilot could have more collective pitch margin under crosswind condition compared to the headwind condition, he might possess much less pedal margin due to the sidewash in the airflow. The unsteady results indicate that the unsteady loading level of the helicopter would increase significantly under the crosswind condition compared to the headwind condition due to the increase of turbulent density in the airwake. Furthermore, for the conventional helicopter, the disturbances on the forces and moments which along the rotor hub (i.e., thrust and yaw moment) are the critical factors that increasing the pilot workload during the landing procedure.

Study of the Effect of the Scatter of Acoustic Modes on Turbine Flutter

The prediction of aerodynamic damping is a relevant issue for turbomachinery design trends. Most of the conventional analysis methodologies for the study of aeroelastic forcing in use until recently neglect any hypothetical effects of adjacent rows. However, in recent years, it has become unquestionable that acoustic waves and nearly convected perturbations reflected in neighboring rows play a significant role in the evaluation of the overall unsteady loading of the blades. In this paper, a study of the impact of these effects in flutter stability margin is performed. For this analysis, ITP Aero’s in-house unsteady 3D frequency domain linearized RANS solver is used. The subject of this research is a setup which is a close representation of a proper LPT geometry. The influence of neighboring rows is examined, taking into consideration how the interactions between rows are scattered into several circumferential modes, as well as into radial modes. A quantitative assessment of all these effects is performed to understand the relative relevance of each one of them, and the results of unsteady aerodynamic blade loading are compared with those of a single-row simulation.

Numerical analysis of propeller loading with a coupling RANS and potential approach

In this paper, we present a coupling potential and Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) approach for the analysis of propeller loading and propulsion performance at self-propulsion condition. There is a presentation of a combination of unsteady RANS method for ship flow with free surface taking into account by volume of fluid method and Lifting Line Model for propeller operating behind ship. An intensified coupling strategy is proposed to simulate the propeller effect in the ship wake. The effective wake is re-examined through the iterations, and there is a presentation of the spatial distribution of propeller forces. Propeller unsteady loading of KCS test case is predicted by flow field from both Full RANS and the Coupling method and compared to experiment results. A circulation-based analysis is made to scrutinize the spatial distribution of propeller loading. The simulation results prove that the coupling method can estimate propeller’s loading and effect on averaged flow field. Ultimately, the coupling method is applied to design an optimal propeller accounting for hull–propeller interaction, which shows its potential for further integrated optimization application.

Evaluating Splitter Blade Designs to Avoid Impeller Failure in a High-Speed Unshrouded Centrifugal Compressor

This study investigates splitter blade failures experienced during testing of an unshrouded transonic centrifugal compressor. Specifically, when the impeller was deeply throttled using an upstream inlet guide vane to introduce significant pre-swirl, the splitter blades exhibited cracking near the root of the leading edge. The observed failures are of particular interest because the impeller does not exhibit a mode shape typical of this type of failure corresponding to either the upstream IGV or downstream diffuser vane count, nor the anticipated surge frequencies. Accordingly, modal analysis and CFD modeling were performed leading to an understanding of the failure mechanism, and a successful splitter blade cut-back solution was implemented. Specifically, excitation sources developed from a CFD model of the IGV and impeller were used in a blade flutter calculation, in order to determine the aerodynamic damping and unsteady loading on the blade. The CFD model indicates that shockwaves arise near the splitter leading edge for this off-design condition. Due to interactions with the high incidence/separated boundary layer, these shockwaves exhibit streamwise unsteadiness, thereby leading to the observed failure mechanisms. It was determined that by cutting back the splitter blade at the leading edge, the failure could be avoided while minimally affecting the overall stage performance.

Impact of Rotor Misalignment due to Platform Motions on Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Blade Loads

The rotor of a horizontal-axis floating offshore wind turbine is more frequently misaligned with the oncoming wind than that of a fixed offshore or onshore wind turbine due to the pitch and yaw motions of the floating support structure. This can lead to increased unsteady loading and fatigue on the components beyond those considered in the standard load cases. In this work, the Simulator fOr Wind Farm Applications (SOWFA) tool within the CFD toolbox OpenFOAM is used to perform simulations of a wind turbine at different stationary angles to the oncoming wind flow that a floating wind turbine may experience, so that the impact of misaligned flow on power production and blade loading can be studied. The turbine is modelled using an actuator line method which is coupled with NREL’s aeroelastic code FAST to compute the structural response. The results of this study will be used in future work to optimise the rotor geometry of a floating offshore wind turbine.