Aerodynamic design of helicopter rotor blade in forward flight using response surface methodology

Abstract

This paper describes an efficient and robust optimization method for helicopter rotor airfoil design in forward flight. Navier-Stokes analysis is employed to compute the dynamic response of an airfoil, which simulates the unsteady rotor flow-field in forward flight. The optimization system consists of two categories: Response Surface Method to construct the response surface model based on D-optimal 3-level factorial design, and Genetic Algorithm to obtain the optimum solution of a defined objective function including penalty terms of constraints. The influence of design variables and their interactions on the aerodynamic performance are examined through the optimization process.