Abstract
Most rotorcraft flight dynamic studies employed higher fidelity rotor modelling approach to precisely resemble the dynamic behaviour of the real rotorcraft in simulation. However, high-fidelity calculations always implemented at the expense of other simulation costs, such as the CPU run-time and the machine hardware. This paper is aimed to highlight the used of lower fidelity rotorcraft calculation approach for light autogyros in normal flight mode where extensive calculations are less vital. A lower fidelity helicopter simulation package, named Helicopter Generic Simulation (HGS) is used as the basis where the structural features are modified according to the unique autogyro’s kinematics. Due to the common longitudinal stability issues previously experienced by typical light autogyros, validations are made in longitudinal steady-state flight mode against the real flight data of the test autogyro. Simulation results show tolerable steady-state predictions of important parameters, such as the fuselage pitch attitude and the longitudinal shaft tilt. Hence, it is recommended to employ the rotor-disc modelling approach for autogyro’s applications that are not subjected to complex rotor blade dynamics, such as in automatic flight control and inverse simulations in normal flight mode.
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Abbreviations
- \(a_{0}\) :
-
Aerofoil lift-curve slope (1/rad)
- \(a_{1}\) :
-
Zero angle of attack lift coefficient
- c :
-
Rotor blade chord length (m)
- \(C_{l} , C_{d}\) :
-
Rotor blade lift and drag coefficients
- d,l :
-
Drag and lift force per unit span (N)
- \(\varvec{f}\) :
-
Local force vector per unit span (N)
- \(\varvec{F}\) :
-
External force vector (N)
- \(g\) :
-
Gravity (m/s2)
- \(I_{R}\) :
-
Rotor moment of inertia (kg m2)
- I yy :
-
Body moment of inertia in pitch (kg m2)
- \(\varvec{i},\varvec{ j},\varvec{ k}\) :
-
Unit vectors
- \(K_{\varvec{\beta}}\) :
-
Centre-spring rotor stiffness (Nm/rad)
- m :
-
Autogyro total mass (kg)
- M :
-
Aerodynamic pitch moment (Nm)
- \(\varvec{M}\) :
-
Moment vectors (Nm)
- \(Q\) :
-
Body axes pitch velocity (rad/s)
- \(Q_{R}\) :
-
Rotor torque (Nm)
- \(\varvec{r}\) :
-
Position vector (m)
- R :
-
Rotor radius (m)
- \(\varvec{r}_{b}\) :
-
Local distance from rotor hub (m)
- \(T_{R} ,T_{prop}\) :
-
Rotor and propeller thrust (N)
- U, W :
-
Translational velocity components in body axes (m/s)
- \(\varvec{v}\) :
-
Translational velocity vector (m/s)
- \(v_{0} ,\varvec{ }v_{{1\varvec{s}}} ,\varvec{ }v_{{1\varvec{c}}}\) :
-
Induced velocity components (m/s)
- X, Y, Z :
-
External force components in body axes (N)
- \({\upbeta}\) :
-
Flapping angle (rad)
- \({\upchi }\) :
-
Induced airflow wake angle (rad)
- \({\updelta }\) :
-
Rotor blade profile drag coefficient
- \({\varOmega }\) :
-
Rotorspeed (rad/s)
- \(\phi\) :
-
Rotor blade angle of incidence (rad)
- \(\phi_{s} ,\theta_{s}\) :
-
Lateral and longitudinal shaft tilt (rad)
- \(\psi\) :
-
Rotor blade azimuthal position (rad)
- \({\uprho }\) :
-
Air density (kg/m2)
- \({\varTheta }\) :
-
Autogyro pitch angle (rad)
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Ahmad, S., Thomson, D. (2020). Validation of Rotor-Disc Model for Light Autogyro in Steady-State Flight Mode. In: Rajendran, P., Mazlan, N., Rahman, A., Suhadis, N., Razak, N., Abidin, M. (eds) Proceedings of International Conference of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering 2019 . Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4756-0_42
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