USA flag logo/image

An Official Website of the United States Government

RotCFD: A Viscous Design Tool for Advanced Configurations

Award Information

Agency:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration 		Branch:
N/A 		Award ID:
 Program Year/Program:
2012 / SBIR
Agency Tracking Number:
105843 		Solicitation Year:
2010 		Solicitation Topic Code:
A2.09 		Solicitation Number:
Small Business Information
Sukra Helitek, Inc.
3146 Greenwood Road Ames, IA 50014-4504
View profile »
Woman-Owned: Yes
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No
 
Phase 2
Fiscal Year: 2012
Title: RotCFD: A Viscous Design Tool for Advanced Configurations
Agency: NASA
Contract: NNX12CA04C
Award Amount: $749,394.00
 

Abstract:

During initial design studies, parametric variation of vehicle geometryis routine. In addition, rotorcraft engineers traditionally use the wind tunnel to evaluate and finalize designs. Correlation between wind tunnel results and flight tests, when not good, have been often attributed in part to uncertainty in blockage corrections. Estimation of rotor blockage is significantly more complex than bluff body corrections as the correction depends on operational characteristics suchas rotor RPM and thrust produced.This proposal offers to develop an Integrated Design Environment (IDE) which can simulate a complete rotorcraft with or without wind tunnel walls including all the facility effects.At the heart of the innovation are:1. An automated hybrid grid generator. (viscous grids near the bodies andunstructured Cartesian grid everywhere else)2. A robust and economical incompressible flow solver for the entire system of grids.3. Momentum source based rotor model that is suitable and economicalfor simulating configurations with multiple rotors.In Phase I, the proof-of-concept developed used unstructured Cartesiangrid for the model and wind tunnel.In phase II, the tool will be extended to hybrid grid with viscous grid near solid surfaces and will include several tools including a simple CAD like geometry manipulation tool and pre- and post-processing tools all integrated in one environment to facilitate ease of use.

Principal Investigator:

Andrew M. Hollingsworth
Principal Investigator
5152929646
nappi@sukra-helitek.com

Business Contact:

Ganesh Rajagopalan
Business Official
5152929646
nappi@sukra-helitek.com
Small Business Information at Submission:

Sukra Helitek, Inc.
3146 Greenwood Road Ames, IA 50014-4504

EIN/Tax ID: 421371077
DUNS: N/A
Number of Employees:
Woman-Owned: Yes
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No