Prediction of sand particle trajectories and sand erosion damage on helicopter rotor blades

Therefore, in this dissertation, accurate and time-efficient methodologies were developed for performing sand particle tracking and predicting sand erosion damage on actual helicopter rotor blades under realistic hover and vertical lift conditions.;In this dissertation, first, injection (release) conditions of solid particles with new injection parameter, sand particle mass flow rate (SPmFR), were specified to deal with the effect of non-uniform and unsteady flow conditions surrounding at each injection point from which solid particles are released. The SPmFR defines the number of solid particles released from the same injection position per unit time. Secondly, a general definition of erosion rate, "mass or volume loss from the metal surface due to the impact of a unit "mass" of solid particles" was also modified by multiplying with SPmFR in order to solve the limitation for predicting erosion damage on actual helicopter rotor blade. Next, a suitable empirical particle rebound model and an erosion damage model for spherical sand particles with diameters ranging from 10 microm to 500 microm impacting on the material Ti-6A1-4V, the material of helicopter rotor blade, were developed. Finally, C++ language based codes in the form of User Defined Functions (UDFs) were developed and implemented into the commercially available multi-dimensional viscous flow solver ANSYS-FLUENT in order to develop and integrate with the general purpose flow solver, ANSYS-FLUENT, for a specific Lagrangian particle trajectory computing algorithm and rebound and erosion quantification purposes.;In the erosion simulation, a reasonably accurate fluid flow solution is necessary. In order to validate the numerical results obtained in this dissertation, computations for flow-only around 2D RAE2822 airfoil and 3D rotating rotor blade (NACA0012) without any sand particle were performed. In the comparison of these results with experimental results, it is found that the flow solutions are in good agreement with the experimental data. Next, second computational validation for flow around the SC1095 airfoil for various turbulence models were performed in order to select a suitable turbulence model. These results concluded that numerical results with k -- o SST model have a reasonably best accuracy.;Relative inflow conditions to the blade section of helicopter rotor blades are highly dependent upon rotor blade geometric conditions and helicopter rotor operational conditions. Therefore, in this dissertation, 3D erosion simulations for four different rotating blades with uniform airfoil profile (SC1095) were performed in order to understand the details of erosion mechanism. These results indicate that erosion patterns including maximum erosion rate position and the extent of erosion damaged area on the blade section were highly dependent upon a spanwise twist distribution. It is found that the magnitude of erosion damage on the blade section is affected by not a spanwise twist but a swept tip.;Next, in this dissertation, UH-60A helicopter rotor blades rotating in the computational domain for various collective pitch angles and climb velocities were simulated. These results indicate that overall erosion characteristics for helicopter rotor blades can be considered to be not dependent upon these operational parameters though there is a little difference in the magnitude of erosion damage and the maximum erosion rate position. These results concluded that a hover condition can be chosen as a reference operational condition for predicting erosion characteristics or for investigating erosion reduction methods.;The final phase of this research is a generalization for particle trajectories and erosion characteristics on 3D helicopter rotor blades in order to reduce very expensive erosion computational cost. The generalized results show that aerodynamic and erosion characteristics for a 3D rotor blade can be predicted by using the 2D airfoil results for corresponding relative inflow angle of attack with coefficient for inflow velocity magnitude and aerodynamic loss difference between 2D and 3D flow simulation results. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).