Rotorcraft Integrated Electro-Optic/Infrared (EO/IR) Plumes and Effects Signature Modeling

Survivability of military rotorcraft is a critical mission objective requiring extensive testing and analysis for various hover and flight modes of transport. Typical analysis requires Electro-Optic/Infra-red (EO/IR) and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensing at a wide variety of environments, flight configurations, and sensor types and orientations using high-fidelity EO/IR and LIDAR modeling. The principal difficulties associated with generating 3D rotorcraft plume signatures are two-fold: (1) the generation of 3D exhaust-plume flowfields in the presence of rotor blade downwash and complex vehicle geometries, and (2) the utilization of that data for composite signature predictions, which includes hot-parts emission, plume emission, and plume-shine reflection. The innovation described in this proposal is the development, verification, and demonstration of a computational framework that addresses currently observed deficiencies associated with rotorcraft-oriented EO/IR signature modeling by combining within a single focused effort validated CFD and EO/IR signature modeling capabilities to develop a streamlined rotorcraft signature prediction procedure that (1) minimizes multi-module data hand-off errors; (2) streamlines IR signature throughput via better data exchange synergy; and (3) establishes an effective baseline for supporting future advanced rotorcraft-focused signature physics modeling including the incorporation/demonstration of an accurate and robust LIDAR capability into the new framework.