Aerodynamic simulation strategies assessment for a Fenestron® in hover flight

Morgane Marino (1, 2) , Nicolas Gourdain (3) , Guillaume Legras (1) , Davide Alfano (1)

1 Airbus Helicopter SAS (FRANCE)
2 CERFACS - Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation Avancée en Calcul Scientifique
3 DAEP - Département Aérodynamique Energétique et Propulsion

The Fenestron® has a crucial anti-torque function and its sizing is a key point of the Helicopter design, especially regarding thrust and power predictions. This paper reports the investigations done on a full scale Dauphin Fenestron®. The objectives are first to evaluate the influence of some numerical parameters on the performance of the Fenestron®. Then the flow is analyzed for a high incidence pitche, for which the rotor blade can experience massive boundary layer separations. Simulations are carried out on a single blade passage model. Several parameters are benched, such as grid quality, numerical schemes and turbulence modeling. A comparison with test bench measurements is carried out to evaluate the capability of the numerical simulations to predict both global performance (thrust and power) and local flows (static pressure at the shroud and radial profiles inside the vein). The analysis demonstrates the capability of numerical simulations to accurately estimate the global performance of the Fenestron®, including at high pitch angles. However, some discrepancies remain on the local flow, especially in the vicinity of the rotor shroud. A more detailed analysis of the local flow is performed at a blade pitch angle of 35°, with a particular interest for the blade tip region.

Mots clés: Fenestron; Numerical simulation; High pitch angle

Domaines: Autre

Morgane Marino, Nicolas Gourdain, Guillaume Legras, Davide Alfano. Aerodynamic simulation strategies assessment for a Fenestron® in hover flight. 6th European conference for aeronautics and space sciences (EUCASS), Jun 2015, Kraków, Poland. pp. 1-18. ⟨hal-01446004⟩