Performance and Design Investigation of Heavy Lift Tiltrotor with Aerodynamic Interference Effects

Abstract

The aerodynamic interference effects on tiltrotor performance in cruise are investigated using comprehensive calculations, to better understand the physics and to quantify the effects on the aircraft design. Performance calculations were conducted for 146,600-lb conventional and quad tiltrotors, which are to cruise at 300 knots at 4000 ft/95 deg F condition. A parametric study was conducted to understand the effects of design parameters on the performance of the aircraft. Aerodynamic interference improves the aircraft lift-to-drag ratio of the baseline conventional tiltrotor. However, interference degrades the aircraft performance of the baseline quad tiltrotor, due mostly to the unfavorable effects from the front wing to the rear wing. A reduction of rotor tip speed increased the aircraft lift-to-drag ratio the most among the design parameters investigated.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA510583

Entities

People

  • Hyeonsoo Yeo
  • Wayne Johnson

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircraft Design
  • Aircraft Equipment
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Drag Reduction
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Geometry
  • Helicopters
  • Rotary Wing Aircraft
  • Tilt Rotor Aircraft
  • Tilt Wing Aircraft
  • United States
  • Wing Tips

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerodynamics/Aeronautics.
  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation