22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-1.8.R1

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW GENERATION MAIN AND TAIL ROTORS BLADE AIRFOILS

W. Kania, W. Stalewski
Institute of Aviation, Poland

Keywords: helicopter, rotor, airfoil

A numerical and experimental study on the design new generation main and tail rotors blade airfoils was performed. Design objectives for the blade sections at several rotor stations are discussed based on the mission requirements and today’s state of the art. The tail rotor airfoil design was aimed specifically to obtain higher CLmax than conventional NACA airfoils for the Mach number up to 0.6. Aerodynamic inverse method and direct iterative design optimization used in the design process are described. The numerical aerodynamic characteristics of the designed rotor airfoils are compared to advanced rotor airfoils family VR12÷VR14. This comparison shows the benefits of the new developed airfoils in relation to the VR airfoils family. Presented numerical efforts led to a new tail rotor airfoil that offers about 40 percent increase in CLmax value at Mach number of 0.6 in relation to conventionall NACA 0012 or 23012 airfoils. A two-dimensional wind tunnel test has been conducted on the newly designed main rotor blade airfoil having thickness of 12% to confirm the numerical design results. The experimental results are compared with the aerodynamic characteristics of other advances rotor airfoils and with numerical results. The agreement of the wind tunnel and calculated results is quite good and it confirms that new developed rotor airfoils family achieved or exceeded the design objectives.

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