Reduced-order Modeling of Rotor-Airwake Aerodynamic Coupling

This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a reduced-order model (ROM) of rotor-airwake aerodynamic coupling for further incorporation into a real-time flight simulator. A CFD rotor-airwake database will be used to design the reduced-order model. The output of the algorithm is the complete flow field (U, V and W velocities at all grid points) of the domain with rotor positioned at a specified hovering location near a backward-facing step. During this phase, the feasibility of the ROM approach will be demonstrated by comparing the output of the algorithm to data generated by a fully coupled rotor-airwake computation. In the next phase, this approach will be extended to explore the applicability of the method to a helicopter moving through the ship airwake in real-time.