Research On Applying Optimization Technologies To Helicopter Design

The design of helicopter and advanced high speed tilt-rotor aircraft is addressed using a series of optimization procedures. The optimization problem is formulated with aerodynamic performance and structural design requirements. With the revolutionary advances in computing power and software technology, the future trend of integrating design and CAD/CAE software package to realize an automated design optimization has been explored in tilt-rotor design. 1)The optimal preliminary project of design to meet the requirements of criterion for helicopter design is worked out by applying the computer and optimization techniques in the paper. A newly emerging approach, genetic algorithm (GA), is illustrated and applied. The method is shown to be very useful by the example and applicable in Z-8 helicopter design. 2)In terms of the aerodynamic characteristics of tilt-rotor aircrafts, this paper separately choose the cruise propulsive efficiency in high speed and the hover figure of merit as the design objective, and combine the rotor vortex theory with the genetic algorithm to proceed with optimum design of the blade spanwise variations of twist and the chord distribution for the tilt-rotor aircrafts. Comparing with the relevant blade data of XV-15, the results obtained are very well. 3)The integrated process of VC, VBA, CATIA, ANSYS and MSC.ADAMS was accomplished using iSIGHT for tilt-rotor blade shape design. The optimization is performed using a formal multidisciplinary optimization procedure. The optimum design is compared with an existing advanced tilt-rotor performance which is used as the baseline design. The results show significant improvements are abtained in the overall rotor performance.