Rotorcraft Brownout: Advanced Understanding, Control and Mitigation

Abstract

The MURI team has started to undertake a carefully planned program of research, including the development of efficacious predictive models for the physical elements that may contribute to the brownout problem. This goal will be achieved by better understanding rotor and airframe aerodynamics when operating in ground effect, as well as how the interaction of rotor wake vortices with the sediment bed occurs, the particulate uplift processes, and the two-phase fluid transport physics. The topic of the present MURI also specifically addresses piloting problems, so proper characterization of brownout clouds will be undertaken based on their optical properties. As the research progresses, brownout mitigation processes using rotorcraft design optimization techniques will then be undertaken using the validated computational methods.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 31, 2008
Accession Number
ADA498268

Entities

People

  • J. G. Leishman

Organizations

  • University of Maryland

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Ground Effect
  • Measurement
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Mechanics
  • Optical Properties
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Rotary Wing Aircraft
  • Test Facilities
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Systems Analysis and Design