Examination of Rotor Loads due to On-Blade Active Controls for Performance Enhancement

摘要

On-blade active controls with trailing-edge deflection, leading-edge deflection, and active-twist are studied fornimprovements in rotor aerodynamic efficiency and their influence on structural loads. A full-scale UH-60AnBlackhawk rotor at two key flight conditions (high-speed forward flight and high-thrust forward flight) is studiednusing coupled computational fluid dynamics and computational structural dynamics simulations. A simulation-nbased trade study is carried out comprising parametric variations of geometric sizing and deployment schedules ofnthe blade morphing. The study shows that active controls improve rotor performance and reduce rotor loads at thensame timewith careful selection of deployment schedule and design. In high-speed forward flight, using trailing-edgendeflection, an improvement of 7.3% in performance and a reduction in the hub vibratory loads of up to 54% isnachieved, and using active-twist an improvement of 7.0%in performance and up to 22%reduction in hub vibratorynloads is achieved. In high-thrust forward flight, a 15.0%improvement in performance and up to 40%reduction innhub vibratory loads is achieved using leading-edge deflection.