Numerical study on flow control of ship airwake and rotor airload during helicopter shipboard landing

A numerical study on flow control of ship airwake during shipboard landing is carried out to address the effect of flow control devices on helicopter rotor airload. The in-house Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) based solver Rotorcraft AeroDynamics and Aeroacoustics Solver (RADAS), with combination of momentum source approach is employed to conduct the helicopter shipboard landing simulation. The control effects of three aerodynamic modifications of ship superstructure, i.e. ramp, notch and flap, in different Wind-Over-Deck (WOD) conditions are discussed. From the steady simulation results, the effect of spatial variation of ship airwake on rotor airloads is concluded. The aerodynamic modifications reduce the strength of shedding vortex and increase rotor normal force through delaying and relieving flow separation, and therefore are beneficial to alleviate the limitation of control inputs. By contrast, the perturbation of unsteady ship airwake can cause the serious oscillation of rotor forces during shipboard landing. The unsteady simulations show that the turbulence intensity of ship airwake and oscillatory rotor airloading, represented by Root-Mean-Square (RMS) loading, can be remarkably reduced by the ramp and notch modifications, while the flap modification has adverse effect. It means that flow control devices have large potential benefits to alleviate the pilot’s workload and improve the shipboard landing safety, but they should be well designed to avoid the introduction of more vortex, which leads to increase in disturbance of flow field.