An Investigation of the Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Helicopter Rotor in Hover by the Variety of Inflow Conditions using Blade Element Momentum Theory (BEMT)

Abstract

In this paper, the aerodynamic characteristics of a helicopter rotor in hover were compared based on a variety of inflow conditions using Blade Element Momentum Theory (BEMT). BEMT has been widely used as an aerodynamic analysis method for helicopter rotors because of its simpler code and shorter calculating time than computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. In order to verify the validity of inflow models, we applied the conventional inflow conditions and Madsen`s inflow condition to the helicopter rotor in hover. The results were compared with Caradonna and Tung`s data.