ROTORCRAFT AEROMECHANICS 4

Rotor aerofoil design requirements (Dr E Gillies, Lecture 2)

Lynx Case Study
The severe environment experienced by rotor blades in high speed, forward flight can be summarized by very high incidences, which approach aerofoil stall, on the retreating side and very high Mach numbers on the advancing side. It is these two aerodynamic phenomena, aerofoil stall and shockwave formation, that impose a limit to the forward speed of any helicopter. Rotor blades are high aspect ratio structures. They benefit from a large amount of centrifugal stiffening in blade bending (and flapping motion) but the blade flexibility in torsion is relatively low. Pitching moments associated with stall, transonic effects, or normal rotor operation must be avoided if the blades are not to twist in flight. Blade Stall Limits The loss of lift occurring during retreating blade stall is not a major problem. At high forward speed, where retreating blade stall occurs, most of the rotor lift is generated over the fore and aft sectors of the rotor disc at around 60% to 90% rotor radius so a loss in lift on the retreating blades does not degrade rotor performance significantly. However, there is a large pitching moment change associated with aerofoil stall . This pitching moment change places a large oscillatory load on the blades and their pitch control mechanism. The pitch control linkages may be damaged, or their fatigue life decreased, by retreating blade stall. As a result of these pitching moment loads, retreating blade stall has to be avoided up to as high an advance ratio as possible. There are two strategies for the aerofoil designer to delay blade stall. One is to increase the blade chord (and hence rotor blade area) & this will decrease the amount of collective pitch, and resulting maximum blade incidence, required to trim the rotor. This strategy can only be used within reason because increased blade chord results in increased profile drag & increased rotor power requirements. Also, blade mass, and the required transmission system mass, increases too. In Westland helicopters design philosophy, the primary factor for selecting blade chord is to avoid retreating blade stall at V NE . The second strategy is to introduce aerofoil camber so that the blade will reach higher incidences before moment stall. Blade camber is, however, an undesireable feature on the advancing blade where transonic effects are important. In transonic flow, camber can induce strong shockwaves with a large drag rise and pitching moment change. Transonic effects The following figure shows a cambered aerofoil pressure distribution in transonic flow, as experienced by the advancing blade. A cambered aerofoil experiences a large pitching moment change in the transonic regime. In transonic flow, the airflow over the upper surface of any aerofoil accelerates to supersonic velocity but recompresses via a shockwave to allow recovery to free stream pressure at the trailing edge. The strength and position of this shockwave has a major influence on the amount of transonic drag rise and pitching moment change experienced by the aerofoil. At high

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forward speed the advancing blade tip is at almost zero incidence (and zero lift). A symmetrical section at zero lift at a Mach number of 0.8 has zero pitching moment, but a cambered section has a strong nose down pitching moment, as shown in the figure.
Cambered aerofoil 0 M = 0.8 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.4 0.035 Cambered aerofoil

surface pressure P/H0

0.2

Cm
0.6 0.04 0.045 0.8 M = 0.7 0.05 0.055 0.5 1 0 0.2 0.4 x/c 0.6 0.8 1

0.6

0.7 0.8 Mach number

0.9

The effects of this large, camber-induced, pitching moment on the advancing blade tips can be severe and so the rotor blade and section is designed to minimize the root pitching moment on the advancing blade. The next figure illustrates the problem and 2 shows the torsional load (represented by M C m ) for a cambered and a symmetrical tip aerofoil around the azimuth.
0.01

SYMMETRICAL SECTION 0.005

Torsional load M2Cm

0.005

0.01 CAMBERED SECTION 0.015

0.02 0

50

100

150 200 Rotor azimuth

250

300

350

It is evident that the cambered section produces a large once-per-rev oscillatory load

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each time the advancing blade passes 90 degrees azimuth. The loads are very high, despite the fact that aerofoil stall is not encountered in this example. It is for this reason that the symmetrical NACA0012 section was used for many years as the basic rotor blade section. This aerofoil, although simple, has reasonably high stall incidence, low pitching moment and tolerable transonic effects. The NACA0012, and NACA 23012, form the basis of several modern rotor blade sections developed by NPL and the RAE in the UK. If a basic NACA0012 section is used with an extended and drooped leading edge as a means to introduce camber then the resulting aerofoil (e.g the NPL 9615) can give a 10% increase in C Lmax with a small increase in M dd and an acceptable pitching moment at zero lift. Essentially, the nose droop allows an increase in camber without increasing the curvature of the upper surface of the aerofoil & hence avoids the increase in upper surface shockwave strength normally associated with aerofoil camber. The allowable amount of nose droop using this design strategy is limited by the nose down moment that occurs from the underside suction peak (and possible shock wave) resulting from the droop. The introduction of aerofoil camber by this method is illustrated in the next figure.

0.05 t/c

NACA 0012 BASIC SECTION NPL 9615

0.05 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 x/c 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35

LEADING EDGE DROOP

Research into what pitching moments are sustainable on a rotor was undertaken by the UK RAE on a Wessex helicopter fitted with modified blades (roughened leading edges over certain sections of the blade span). These innovative flight tests at RAE Bedford demonstrated that C Lmax over the inner sections (0 to 60%) of the blades of a helicopter is not a major factor in determining rotor performance and setting the helicopter flight envelope. This is a useful design guideline, because it means that an aerofoil section with reflex camber (an upwards sloping trailing edge for example) and a nose up pitching moment but with poor C Lmax can be used on the inner section of the blades to balance the nose down moment generated by high-lift cambered aerofoil sections further outboard. The modern blade design strategy is therefore to incorporate a modest amount of blade camber on outboard blade sections to delay retreating blade stall, while maintaining low pitching moments and control loads with the use of reflex camber on inboard sections. The NPL 9615 is an example of an early `modern' rotor section achieving high lift but with acceptable transonic behaviour. It was designed by experience, tunnel testing and

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analysis at NPL by Wilby and Pearcey in the 1960's (most of the material for this lecture was in fact provided by P.Wilby). Their research has led to even better section designed by a combination of experience, tunnel testing (at ARA) and CFD methods at RAE and Westland Helicopters in the RAE 9645 section which is used as the main lifting aerofoil on the Lynx helicopter. These modern rotor aerofoils are still UK classified but their general design and use on the Lynx rotor is described below. Lynx rotor aerofoil case study. The result of many years of tunnel testing (using oscillatory pitching tests to reflect the changing incidences met by rotor blades) and development from the original RAE/NPL 9615 section is a set of three aerofoils each used for a different purpose on the Lynx rotor. RAE 9645 is the main lifting aerofoil used on the Lynx helicopter and is employed between 65% and 85% blade span. This aerofoil is used to achieve the best possible retreating blade stall behaviour. To determine the section's retreating blade stall behaviour, the section is tested in conditions similar to those found on a retreating Lynx blade. A close approximation to these conditions is obtained in a wind tunnel at M=0.3, and where the aerofoil model undergoes sinusoidal pitching at 30Hz and 8 degrees half amplitude. This frequency is selected to obtain a similar reduced c U between test conditions and real life. An aerofoil undergoing frequency such oscillations experiences dynamic stall (which we will discuss in a later lecture)where the change in pitching moment can be as much as 500% of the static stall moment break. The magnitude of the pitching moment break is plotted against the maximum aerofoil incidence in a cycle and the resulting intercept with the incidence axis is a measure of the maximum achievable blade incidence on the rotor. This type of `critical dynamic incidence' diagram, for the RAE9645 is shown below.

0.2 0.18 0.16 0.14

RAE 9645

C change at stall

0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 CRITICAL INCIDENCE 0.02 0 0

10 AOA

12

14

16

18

20

The RAE 9645 achieves a 30% increase in maximum lift coefficient over the NACA 0012. It is around 12% thick and its (approximate due to the classified nature of the aerofoil) shape is shown in the following figure:

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RAE 9645 MAIN LIFTING AEROFOIL

This aerofoil has a moderate nose down moment at zero lift resulting from its `nosedroop' camber and so its pitching moment on the rotor blade is balanced by a RAE 9648 section inboard, from the hub up to 65% rotor radius. The RAE 9648 is also 12% thick but has a reflexed trailing edge providing a nose up moment. There is a penalty in using this aerofoil at high Mach numbers because of the lower critical Mach number introduced by reflex camber- however, this is not as important for the inboard sections because their Mach numbers are not too high, even at high advance ratio.

RAE 9648 REFLEXED SECTION

Finally a tip aerofoil section, the RAE 9634 is used between 85% and 100% span. This aerofoil is designed to delay transonic flow effects and, consequently, it is only 8.3% thick.

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RAE 9634 TIP SECTION

The following figure shows the drag coefficients and pitching moments of these three aerofoils. The figure also shows the maximum incidence these aerofoils can sustain in an oscillatory pitch test without stalling. The RAE 9645 is seen to be far superior in dynamic lifting capability and the RAE9634 the best transonic aerofoil.
0.03 0.025 0.02
C
D

20 RAE 9645 RAE 9648 19 RAE 9645 18

0.015 0.01 0.005 0 0.5 0.6 RAE 9634 17

critical

0.7 0.8 Mach number

0.9

0.04 RAE 9648 0.02 0

C

AOA

16

15 RAE 9634

0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.5

RAE 9634

14

13 RAE 9645 12 0.3

RAE 9648

0.6

0.7 0.8 Mach number

0.9

0.35

0.4 0.45 Mach number

0.5

Sweeping the tip is another strategy used on modern helicopters to delay transonic effects and will be discussed in the next lecture.