Assessment of Rotor Hover Performance Using a Node-based Flow Solver

A three-dimensional viscous flow solver has been developed for the prediction of the aerodynamic performance of hovering helicopter rotor blades using unstructured hybrid meshes. The flow solver utilized a vertex-centered finite-volume scheme that is based on the Roe's flux-difference splitting with an implicit Jacobi/Gauss-Seidel time integration. The eddy viscosity are estimated by the Spalart-Allmaras one-equation turbulence model. Calculations were performed at three operating conditions with varying tip Mach number and collective pitch setting for the Caradonna-Tung rotor in hover. Additional computations are made for the UH-60A rotor in hover. Reasonable agreements were obtained between the present results and the experiment in both blade loading and overall rotor performance. It was demonstrated that the present vertex-centered flow solver is an efficient and accurate tool for the assessment of rotor performance in hover.