A. James Clark School of Engineering

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1654

The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

Browse

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Rotorcraft Brownout Mitigation Through Flight path Optimization Using a High Fidelity Rotorcraft Simulation Model
(2012) Alfred, Jillian; Celi, Roberto; Aerospace Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Brownout conditions often occur during approach, landing, and take off in a desert environment and involve the entrainment and mobilization of loose sediment and dust into the rotor flow field. For this research, a high fidelity flight dynamics model is used to perform a study on brownout mitigation through operational means of flight path. In order for the high fidelity simulation to model an approach profile, a method for following specific profiles was developed. An optimization study was then performed using this flight dynamics model in a comprehensive brownout simulation. The optimization found a local shallow optimum approach and a global steep optimum approach minimized the intensity of the resulting brownout clouds. These results were consistent previous mitigation studies and operational methods. The results also demonstrated that the addition of a full rotorcraft model into the brownout simulation changed the characteristics of the velocity flow field, and hence changing the character of the brownout cloud that was produced.