Ph.D. Proposal

Brenden Oates

(Advisor: Prof. Marilyn Smith)

"Computational Fidelity Analysis for Rotorcraft Flight Dynamics in Unsteady, Complex Ship Airwakes"

Friday, March 7

9:00 a.m.

Skiles Room 271

Abstract 

Operation of rotorcraft on and near naval ships poses many challenges due to the complex, turbulent airwake environment over the flight deck. The unsteady ship movement, stochastic weather events, and limited deck space all contribute to making terminal operations notoriously difficult for even seasoned pilots. A major resource in the training and safety of these pilots is practice with flight simulators, where realistic flight conditions and accurate ship airwake simulations are required. Additionally, the future of naval-based vertical flight will rely more heavily on smaller ships operating with many Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) from their decks, which has never been modeled or investigated before. Thus, to properly recreate the ship airwake environment, a deeper understanding of the underlying physics must first be achieved. To address this, a series of experimental flow field measurements over different canonical ship geometries were collected and corresponding computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were completed. Preliminary results indicate that both high- and mid-fidelity CFD solvers are able to accurately predict the mean flow quantities, unsteady velocity components, and the spatially averaged power spectral density content over the flight deck. Current results also suggest a piecewise representative environmental reduced order model may be a viable method for real-time predictions of the complex flow field. A model of this nature could be used to gain insight into the underlying physics that cause increased pilot workload and can be used to alter flight path operations, to modify ship design to mitigate these physics, or to be incorporated into flight controls systems. Future works including corrections for rotor effects and expanding to three-dimensional flow predictions are also discussed.

Committee 

• Prof. Marilyn Smith – School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor) 

• Prof. Jürgen Rauleder– School of Aerospace Engineering

 • Prof. Beckett Zhou – School of Aerospace Engineering