Doctoral student Richard Healy and his advisor Dr. Farhan Gandhi, director of the Center for Mobility with Vertical Lift (MOVE), have won the 2022 Alfred Gessow Best Paper Award from the Aircraft Design technical session at the Vertical Flight Society’s 78th Annual Forum & Technology Display that took place in May 2022.
The selection process, which began in October 2021, was very rigorous. Out of 285 abstracts received, Forum 78 committee chairs selected 219 papers for publication. During the Forum, the session and technical committee chairs selected the best papers from each of the 21 technical papers for final consideration. Then the Society’s Deputy Technical Directors for Aeromechanics, Vehicle Design, Vehicle Integrity, System Integration, Systems Engineering, and Operations and Product Support winnowed that number down to seven finalists. Richard was one of these seven finalists, and his paper was recognized as the best overall in Vehicle Design disciplines.
The paper, Wing Lift Enhancement from Aft Rotor Induced Suction, explored the aerodynamic interactions of rotor-wing units in which lifting rotors are mounted below and behind a wing. The team simulated the performance of the rotor-wing units using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and then compared it to that of isolated rotors and wings. Their study found that the interactional aerodynamics associated with mounting a rotor below and behind a wing can improve performance over a range of wing angles and rotor loadings.
“The novel wing-lift augmentation presented in this work has the potential to greatly improve the aerodynamic efficiency of rotor-wing vehicles,” Healy said. “This technology is applicable to many electric air vehicle designs, and could provide enhanced performance that leads to improved payload capacity, endurance, or range."