Effects of Deck Motion and Ship Airwake on Ski-Jump Takeoff Performance of Carrier-Based Aircraft

We first analyzed the force and motion of naval aircraft during launching process.Further,we investigated the ship deck with the form of a ramp and established deck motion model and ship airwake model.Finally,we conducted simulations at medium sea.Results showed that the effects of deck motion on takeoff varied with initial phases,and airwake could help reducing aircraft′s sinkage.We also found that the deck motion played a major role in the effects caused by the interaction of deck motion and ship airwake.

Influence of Ship Motion on Flow Field over Modified Simple Frigate Shapes

When the frigate moves forward,due to the ship motion such as pitching and rolling,the flow over the flight deck becomes very complex,which may seriously threaten the taking off and landing of the ship-borne helicopter.The flow fields over the different modified simple frigate shape(SFS)models,consisting of the hangar and flight deck,were numerically studied by changing the ratio of hangar height and length in the static state and pitching state.For different models,the contours of velocity and pressure above the flight deck,as well as the variations of velocity components of the observation points and line in static state and pitching state were compared and analyzed.The results show that the size of recirculation zone and the location of the reattachment point have distinct differences for diverse models,and reveal the tracks of recirculation zone’s center and reattachment position in a pitching period.In addition,the velocity components at two observation positions also change periodically with the periodic motion.Furthermore,the deviations of the velocity components in static state and pitching state are relatively large,therefore,the flow fields in static state cannot be used to simulate that in pitching state correctly.

Towards real-time pilot-in-the-loop CFD simulations of helicopter/ship dynamic interface

This study presents the development of computationally efficient coupling of Navier–Stokes Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD)with a helicopter flight dynamics model with the ultimate goal of real-time simulation of airwake effects in the helicopter/ship Dynamic Interface(DI).The flight dynamics model is free to move within a computational domain,where the main rotor forces are converted to source terms in the momentum equations of the CFD solution using an actuator disk model.Simultaneously,the CFD solver calculates induced velocities that are fed back to the simulation and affect the aerodynamic loads in the flight dynamics.The CFD solver models the inflow,ground effect and interactional aerodynamics in the flight dynamics simulation,and these calculations can be coupled with the solution of the external flow(e.g.,ship airwake effects).The simulation framework for fully-coupled pilot-in-the-loop(PIL)flight dynamics/CFD is demonstrated for a simplified shedding wake.Initial tests were performed with 0.38 million structured grid cells running on 352 processors and showed near-real-time performance.Improvements to the coupling interface are described that allow the simulation run at near-real-time execution speeds on currently available computing platforms.Improvements in computing hardware are expected to allow real-time simulations.