AUT Journal of Mechanical Engineering AUT J. Mech. Eng., 5(1) (2021) 173-190 DOI: 10.22060/ajme.2020.17224.5850 Assessment of Fountain Flow Effects on Two Non-Overlap Tandem Rotors Performance A. Mehrabi, A. R. Davari* Department of Aerospace Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran ABSTRACT: Very few issues are yet to be reported about the fountain flow beneath the tandem Review History: rotors configuration body in ground effect. In this paper, a series of tests have been performed using Received:15/10/2019 multipurpose test stand to study the fountain flow pattern of a sub-scale model of a generic tandem Revised: 07/02/2020 rotor helicopter in ground effect. Pressure and velocity measurements were performed by the pressure Accepted:10/03/2020 ports embedded longitudinally along a generic tandem rotor helicopter fuselage. The presence of a Available Online: 19/03/2020 second rotor in tandem rotors configuration causes a fountain flow formation in the longitudinal center region below the helicopter and a semi-quiescent flow was there. The positive effects of this flow were Keywords: detected such as increasing the sub-body pressure lifting force, the pressure distribution balance, and Pressure Distribution reinforcing the lift by the formation of the positive pressure gradient on sidewalls of the airframe. Tuft Lift force test observations confirmed the location of the fountain flow formation concluded from pressure and Non-overlapping Tandem Rotor; velocity measurements. The mentioned fountain flow aerodynamic effects must be taken into account Fountain Flow in the tandem rotor helicopter flight controls trims, stability, and control augmentation system and lift Helicopter force calculations. 1. INTRODUCTION quiescent flow region under the helicopter that is 1.1. In Ground Effect Hover likely to be similar to a fountain flow, even though no A deeper understanding of the unsteady aerodynamics measurements have already been reported to confirm of tandem rotor helicopters, which was started in past this hypothesis. In the literature, this region is known as decades, shed new light on the issue of their performance. the Fountain flow and is formed below the intersection For a helicopter flying near the ground, the direction of the two rotors where the flow is upward [4]. of flow induced by the rotor changes from vertical While a tandem rotor configuration hovers and two downwash to radial outwash due to interactions with rotors are positioned so that there is no overlap between the ground. The value of rotor disk loading determines them, there is a clear distance between them, in the upper the strength of this induced flow [1]. The outwash starts surface of the airframe the downwash and spanwise from the outboard region of the blade tip and flows flows from the blade tip vortices merge at the centerline away from the helicopter, as shown in Fig. 1. of the fuselage and will form an upward unsteady Despite the ground effect is a well-known issue fountain flow (Fig.2). This flow gets recirculated in helicopter performance, it is necessary that some into the rotors and has a significant influence on the remained dark corners of the aerodynamics behavior of aerodynamic performance of the rotors. In hover, the tandem rotors in ground effect should be discovered. upper Fountain flow causes a vertical drag force on the The ground effect is one of the primary concerns during fuselage, which is called download [5]. The experiments actual flight and also in a wind tunnel or hovering tests. made to measure the download on the wings of tilt rotors For heights less than one rotor diameter above the in helicopter mode showed that the amount of its reverse ground, the hovering performance is strongly affected effect was equal to 10-15% of the total rotor thrust and by the ground effect [3]. reduces the vehicle payload in hover Out of Ground Effect (OGE) [6-8]. 1.2. Fountain Flow When the helicopter hovers In-Ground Effect (IGE), The flow-field around the tandem rotor systems can the presence of the ground influences the wake of the be divided into five regions, based on the dominant rotors under the fuselage (Fig.2). A large part of the phenomena in each region. There can be seen a relatively wakes of the tandem rotors spanwise flows recirculate *Corresponding author’s email: [email protected] as they interact with the ground surface and meet under Copyrights for this article are retained by the author(s) with publishing rights granted to Amirkabir University Press. The content of this article is subject to the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License. For more information, please visit https://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode. 1 A. Mehrabi and A. R. Davari, AUT J. Mech. Eng., 5(1) (2021) 173-190, DOI: 10.22060/ajme.2020.17224.5850 the longitudinal centerline of the fuselage and form a the performance of tandem rotors [13, 14]. Ramasamy Fountain flow in a similar form to what happens on [9] studied the downwash and outwash flow behavior the upper surface of the fuselage [9]. This Fountain by conducted experiments using a sub-scale CH-47D flow will be trapped under the bottom surface of the helicopter measuring the flow-field velocities in a fuselage and causes an upward force on the helicopter vertical plane at several azimuth angles and various and reduces the download on the fuselage caused by radial distances from the rotor axis, using the particle upper surface fountain flow. Some measurements show image velocimetry technique. He reported that there is a that this positive upward force, could be as high as 9% relatively quiescent flow region under the airframe that of the rotor total thrust in tilt rotors in their helicopter is likely to be similar to a Fountain flow, but he didn’t mode [10]. So, in contrary to thrust reduction due to the perform any measurement on that region. Fountain flow in the upper surface of the fuselage, below Some studies on the upper Fountain flow of tilt- the helicopter fuselage, the Fountain flow increases the rotors in helicopter mode and side-by-side rotors were lifting capacity and payload beyond the maximum thrust conducted to identify and reduce resultant downloads of the rotors. and their unfavorable consequences. These experiments Clearly, it is very important to know the effects of were on major subjects like as effect of the tilt-rotor this flow on the performance of the tandem rotors in wing geometry on download value, the effect of the different positions to achieve better performance in rotor location on fountain flow, download force, and the the hover mode. It seems that the flow pattern of the effect of parameters such as ground effect on Fountain Fountain flow in tandem rotors varies with having flow of actual tilt rotor configurations. It is important overlap or without overlap. Investigating the effects of to note that in ground effect, contrary to the mentioned distance between tandem rotors and the ground effect configurations, the Fountain flow-field of the tandem on the pressure and velocity values of the Fountain flow rotors, even their non-overlap type is more complex. below the generic tandem model is the main topic of the Because in the side-by-side arrangement of the tilt present study. rotors, each rotor is less affected by the wake of the For a single rotor operating near the ground, the other one, but in the tandem arrangement, each rotor is direction of the downwash flow in the vicinity of the affected by vortices of other rotor’s wake. ground rapidly changes from vertical to radial along Fountain flow velocities of a full-span and a semi- the surface, extending away from the disk area. This span configuration with an image plane of a sub-scale region encompasses many turbulent vortices within the model of the XV-15 tilt rotor measured by hot-wire boundary layer with a wide range of length scales. When technique in reference [8]. It was observed that flow the rotor height above the ground decreases, it has been velocities have significant differences in the upper observed that the vortex sheet will stretch with higher Fountain-flow region in comparison with other azimuth swirl velocities, resulting in less viscous diffusion and angles. It should be noted that the Fountain flow is a an increasing number of the pairing tip vortices [11]. free jet, so the flow behavior changes by the shear layer This process preserves a much longer vortex core that forms on an image plane that was used and it is not original shape against the changes and preserves its actual. original shape [12]. It is expected that the effects of this In recent years, with the advent of digital computers physical behavior of the flow will also be observed under the and numerical algorithms, valuable information has been helicopter airframe which leads to the formation of a Fountain obtained using computational fluid dynamics [15, 16]. flow. The tip vortices and the vortex sheets along with However, accurate enough predictions at a reasonable pressure jump across the blades, impart remarkable computational time and costs are still challenging issues oscillations in the velocity which must be taken into [17]. Care must be taken in mesh generation and choice account in rotor Fountain flow measurements. of turbulence model to properly capture the details of such complicated phenomena as Fountain flow and 1.3. Research Background the rotor wake structure [18]. The comparison of the The results of studies show that the ground effect results of the numerical studies with experimental data on tandem rotor configurations cannot be modeled and actual results has shown the significant progress by linear functions of such independent variables as of these methods and their success in simulating and thrust or height of rotors from the ground.