Aerodynamic Investigation of a Model Scale Helicopter Rotor in Ground Effect

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Havacılık ve Uzay Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2017

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: Mehmet Şahbaz

Asıl Danışman (Eş Danışmanlı Tezler İçin): Dilek Funda Kurtuluş

Eş Danışman: Nilay Sezer Uzol

Özet:

In this thesis, ground effect issue which is a vital topic for helicopter industry is investigated with model scale.For this purpose, a test setup with model helicopter rotor is established. With setup, ground effect is investigated with inclined ground and ground without inclination. Thrust and torque values are obtained for different rotation speeds with constant collective pitch. Comparison with literature is done and reliability of the test setup is proven. Inclined Ground Effect and Ground Effect with extreme proximity scenarios are tested. The proper trends of the performance parameters in these scenarios are obtained. For the sake of performance parameter alterations, CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) Method is applied to analyze the rotor downwash. To model the rotating helicopter blade, Single Moving Reference Frame Method (SMRF) is used. In this method, the blade and background mesh are kept still and rotational velocity is defined at each cell in the domain. With CFD results, flow physics is studied and performance changes in ground effect are explained.