AE 667: Assignment 1

Weightage: 20% of the total grades

Suggested due date: 25th Aug. (Sunday)
(Try your best to finish work by this day. The next assignment will get posted by then and
extending work beyond this point will lead to less time for the next assignment)
Absolute deadline: 1st Sept. (Sunday) 11:59 PM
(Submissions after this deadline will attract 5% penalty for each 30 minutes delay. For example,
15% will be deducted from the assignment grades if the submission happens at 1:30 AM)
Work Share:
1. Team: Coding part of the assignment (flight simulator and mission planned development)
2. Individual: Drone design and analysis using the developed codes

A note on plagiarism:
The coding aspects of the assignment are to be done in a team, and the design aspects are to be
done individually. While discussion across teams is encouraged, simply copying someone else’s
work will attract zero marks for all involved.

Background
You are hired at HAL’s helicopter division and your team has been given the tasks of developing a
basic helicopter flight simulator and mission planner for training pilots and helping commanders
plan their missions with the available helicopters. Individually, you have also been asked to do
preliminary design of a helicopter drone for high-altitude operations for Army. The specifics of the
requirements are as follows:
Flight Simulator:
1. Should be able to model a conventional helicopter consisting of a single main rotor, tail rotor,
fuselage, skid, horizontal stabilizer and vertical stabilizer.
2. It should have the flexibility to accommodate change in helicopter design parameters.
3. It must account for:
o Pilot inputs (collective pitch, cyclic pitch, tail rotor collective)
o Flight conditions (hover, climb, forward flight)
o Blade inertia
o Atmospheric conditions (variation in temperature, pressure, density, etc)
4. It should update all forces and moments about the centre of gravity (or a reference point) 72
times per main rotor rotation (every 5 degrees).
5. The flight simulator tool will serve as the backend for mission planner tool and will also be
used for helicopter design.

Mission Planner:
 1. Must calculate how much fuel will be needed for a given mission profile consisting of take-
off, climb, cruise, loiter, cruise, and landing, with a preset fraction of reserve fuel.
2. Must warn if it the mission is not possible (for any reason such as insufficient fuel capacity,
insufficient engine power, blade stall, etc. in any of the flight segments)
3. Must account for the head/tail winds for the cruise segments.
4. Must account for any loading or unloading of payload in the middle of a mission.

Helicopter Drone:
1. Should be able to take off from 5500 m altitude with at least 50 kg payload and 50 kg fuel.
2. Should be able to fly for at least 10 hours at sea level (without payload)
3. The only available engine is Turbotech. Specifications of the same are provided separately.

Goals of Assignment 1:
1. Initiating the development of flight simulator and mission planner, with physics of hover
and climb modes, and provision for inclusion of other flight modes. (team effort)
2. First-cut design of helicopter main rotor in full detail considering hover and climb modes
using the developed codes. (individual effort)

Tasks
1. Make simulation tool to implement Blade Element Momentum Theory with the Prandtl
Tip Loss model (will require iterative solving). The program should be flexible enough to
allow setting linear twist, linear taper, and root cut-outs, and non-zero climb velocity, etc.
2. Benchmark the tool by comparing your results from the BEM Theory against the
experimental results from a paper by Knight and Hefner [1]. We want to see if the developed
codes are good enough for designing your rotor.
[Note that the definition of CT and CP used in the paper are a bit different from the modern
definition. Hence, make the necessary modification to the available data before comparison.]

Details on rotor geometry and airfoil from the paper are provided in the following table:

Rotor
Radius 0.762 m
Root Cut-out 0.125 m
Number of blades 2/3/4/5
(choose any one for your
analysis)
Chord length 0.0508 m
Airfoil
Cl = ao α
= 5.75 α
Cd = Cd(min) + ε α2
= 0.0113 + 1.25 α2
 3. Understand Design Variables Study the effect of variation in (a) Solidity (b) Taper (c)
Twist on Thrust and Power individually for the previous rotor.
4. Try out the flight simulator to see how it behaves in real time for a sample helicopter.
5. Make mission planner tool with hover and vertical climb modes, taking in further
information about the helicopter (such as vehicle weight, tail rotor power fraction, engine
losses, specific fuel consumption of the engine, etc.) and utilizing the simulation code for
estimating power required. The mission planner tool must be able to estimate vehicle
weight each minute
6. Try out the mission planner tool for the sample helicopter.
7. Define details of own versatile helicopter drone design.
8. Finalize the main and tail rotor designs by setting rotor design parameters: (a) Airfoil, (b)
Radius, (c)Rotor Speed, (d)Number of Blades, (e)Chord Length Variation, (f)Twist Variation.
9. Determine your rotor’s performance by plotting Thrust and Power vs Collective Pitch
(θ0) up to the airfoil stall limit.
10. Check the hover endurance of your helicopter at 2000 m altitude.

Program Structure
Flight Simulator Program
The flight simulator program must have the following functions for modularity. Additional
functions or sub-functions may be created as necessary.
1. User Inputs: Allow users to specify geometric, aerodynamic, structural, and functional
details of the helicopter rotors (main and tail), fuselage, engine, etc.
2. Blade Geometry: Takes in bladed geometry parameters and returns chord length and pitch
angle of the blade section at a given radial location
3. Atmosphere: Calculates temperature, pressure, density, speed of sound, etc. at a given
altitude for specified weather condition (ISA temperature offsets)
4. Airfoil: Gives Cl , Cd, Cm of the airfoil at a given angle of attack
5. Inflow: Computes inflow consisting of vehicle velocity, wind velocity, and induced velocity
for each blade section
6. Instantaneous integrator: integrates instantaneous forces and moments on individual
blades. It relies on all of the above functions in addition to the knowledge of instantaneous
blade location to give answers.
7. Cycle integrator: integrates forces and moments about one complete rotation for
performance computations (thrust, power, moments, etc.)
8. Tail rotor: Uses information on tail rotor geometry, placement, and the required counter
torque to compute tail rotor thrust and power
9. Vertical and horizontal stabilizers: Computes forces on the horizontal and vertical
stabilizers based on stabilizer geometry and placement.
10. Vehicle dynamics: Takes in instantaneous forces and moments from all components of the
vehicle (main rotor, tail rotor, stabilizers, etc.) and computes the net instantaneous forces
and moments (all three axes) about the vehicle centric reference frame, accounting for the
placement of the components.
Mission Planner Program
The Mission Planner program must have the following functions for modularity. Additional
functions or sub-functions may be created as necessary.
1. Mission Inputs: Allows users to specify mission data, such as take-off weight, take-off
altitude, fuel weight, details about each flight segment.
2. Flight Segments: Calculates power required for the flight segment (based on flight simulator
program), power available from the engine, and fuel burn rate. Updates vehicle and fuel
weight frequently and warns if the flight segment is infeasible due to any reason
(insufficient engine power, potential stall, insufficient fuel). The flight segments of interest
are:
a. Hover and vertical climb
b. Forward and steady climb
c. Payload pickup/drop
d. Loiter

Team Report Slides (70%)

1. Starting Assumptions & Data
State all assumptions / data utilized while programming and designing vehicle
(for eg. Airfoil data taken from tables, fuselage assumed to be drag-less, etc.)
1.1. Physics Assumptions/Data [1]
1.2. Environmental Assumptions/Data [1]
1.3. Vehicle Assumptions/Data [1]
1.4. Flight Condition Assumptions/Data [1]

2. Algorithm/Logic Flow Diagrams

2.1. Working/Algorithm/Logic Flow Diagram of the Flight Simulator Code [15]
2.2. Working/Algorithm/Logic Flow Diagram of the Mission Planner [8]
3. Flight Simulator Benchmarking
3.1. Thrust vs θ0 plots: B.E.M.T and experimental results on the same chart [3]
3.2. Torque vs θ0 plots: B.E.M.T and experimental results on the same chart [3]
3.3. Thrust vs Power plots: B.E.M.T and experimental results on the same chart [3]
3.4. Observations, comments, conclusions from the above plots [4]

4. Design Variable Variations

(4 data points for each plot)
4.1. Thrust vs Blades & Power vs Blades and observations [4]
4.2. Thrust vs Taper ratio & Power vs Taper ratio plots and observation [4]
(taper ratio = ctip/croot)
4.3. Thrust vs Twist & Power vs Twist plots and observation (twist = θroot - θtip) [4]

For the following two sections, assume a test vehicle with:

(a) 2m radius main rotor with 3 blades identical to the experimental setup
(b) Fuel tank carrying 50 kg fuel
(c) Turbotech engine
(d) 2-bladed 0.5m radius tail rotor with chord = 0.2m
(e) Installed power loss of 10%
(f) Position details: XMR-CG = 0.5m ; XTR-CG = 3m ; ZMR-CG = 1.5m ; ZTR-CG = 0.5m ;
(refer the following diagram)

5. Live Flight Simulator GUI Test

5.1. 10 second clip (screen-recorded) of flight simulator in action. Change main rotor and tail
rotor collective pitch sequentially and show how the forces and moments about all three
axes change (FX, FY , FZ, Mx, My, Mz). [10]
 (A GUI with inputs for collective pitch, 2 cyclic pitches, and tail rotor collective and running
plot output for the three forces and three moments about the helicopter reference axis will be
provided. You will need to integrate it with your flight simulator.

6. Mission Planner Test

6.1. Maximum Take Off Weight based on blade stall at 2000 m AMSL [1]
6.2. Maximum Take Off Weight based on power requirement at 2000 m AMSL [1]
6.3. Fuel Burn Rate (kg/minute) vs Gross Weight (kgf) plot at 2000 m AMSL [3]
6.4. OGE Hover Endurance (minutes) vs Take-Off-Weight (kgf) plot at 2000 m AMSL [3]

Individual Report Slides (30%)

1. Additional Assumptions/Data for your own helicopter design

1.1. Assumptions/data not covered in or different from the team presentation but used while
coming up with own vehicle design. [1]

2. Preliminary Drone Design

2.1. Describe the design developed by you for the versatile drone helicopter [14]
Parameter Main Rotor Tail Rotor

Airfoil

Rotor Radius (m)

Rotor Speed (m)

Number of Blades

Chord Length Variation

Twist Variation

Root Cutout

2.2. Position details (XMR-CG , XTR-CG , ZMR-CG ,ZTR-CG) [1]

2.3. Maximum main and tail rotor thrusts before stall [2]
2.4. Create plots for: [6]
• Thrust vs θ0
• Torque vs θ0
• Thrust vs Power

With curves for main rotor, tail rotor, and the experimental rotor on the same chart.
 3. Hover Mission Test
Assume:
(a) Your helicopter drone design,
(b) Fuel tank carrying 50 kg fuel
(c) Turbotech engine
(d) Installed power loss of 10%
3.1. Maximum Take Off Weight based on blade stall at 2000 m AMSL [1]
3.2. Maximum Take Off Weight based on power requirement at 2000 m AMSL [1]
3.3. Fuel Burn Rate (kg/minute) vs Gross Weight (kgf) plot at 2000 m AMSL [2]
3.4. OGE Hover Endurance (minutes) vs Take-Off-Weight (kgf) plot at 2000 m AMSL [2]

4. Acknowledgement
Mandatory to acknowledge people you discussed with or took help for any part of the
assignment

5. References
List all references (books, paper, websites, etc.) used while doing the assignment

6. Code/Tool
As a separate zip file, along with its user manual

Guidance on the computer program:

1. Programming language: Use only freely available ones. Python preferred (-5% for
MATLAB, etc.)
2. Make the code modular by splitting it into functions (preferably separate files). Add a
preamble to each function file describing what the function is supposed to do, what inputs
does it need, what does it output, and any assumptions that have been made. Remember,
you will end up using some of the functions across more than one assignments, so doing this
will save you from frustration later.
3. Add comment against each variable name to describe what the variable means
4. Add comment for each functional chunk of code to explain what it is supposed to do.
5. Have a separate user input function/file where a user can specify all necessary design
details and flight condition.
6. Write a "Readme.txt" file with complete instructions on how to run your code.

References
[1] Knight, M., & Hefner, R. A. (1937). Static thrust analysis of the lifting airscrew.