Abstract:
In order to meet the urgent needs of next-generation helicopters for independent-designed high-performance rotor airfoils, a study on the aerodynamic optimization design and verification method of rotor airfoils has been carried out. The analyze and setting methods of rotor airfoil performance indicators are developed, and the helicopter rotor airfoil pedigree planning is proposed as well. Based on the evolutionary multi-objective algorithm combined with the principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm, a multi-point/multi-objective optimization design method for rotor airfoils is established. The method is then used to optimize the design of airfoils with typical thicknesses. Aerodynamic performance of the optimized airfoils are verified by wind-tunnel experiments in which breakthrough in the accurate measurement of rotor airfoil aerodynamic characteristics has been achieved. Both computational and experimental results show that the comprehensive performance of the designed airfoil has an improvement to some extent compared with the reference one. On this basis, a comprehensive evaluation method for theoretical calculation and experimental verification of rotor performance is constructed. The deviation of the main performance indicators of the rotor obtained by the two methods is less than 5%, indicating that the method is highly reliable. The evaluation results show that the aerodynamic performance of the rotor model based on the designed airfoil is improved by 3% compared with the one based on the reference airfoil.