From small drones to large Urban Air Mobility vehicles, the market of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is currently booming. Modern VTOL designs feature a variety configurations involving rotors, lifting surfaces bluff bodies. The resulting aerodynamics are highly impacted by interactions between those components their wakes. This has consequences on performance downstream wake. St...

.......................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 5 Prior Projects and Research ...................................................................................

As part of the Rotary Wing Structures Technology Demonstration (RWSTD) program, a surrogate RAH-66 seat attachment fitting was dynamically tested to assess its response to transient, crash impact loads. The dynamic response of this composite material fitting was compared to the performance of an identical fitting subjected to quasi-static loads of similar magnitude. Static and dynamic tests wer...

In this paper we explore established methods for optimising multi-objective functions whilst addressing the problem of preliminary design. Methods from the literature are investigated and new ones introduced. All methods are evaluated within a collaborative project with British Aerospace for whole system airframe design and the basic problems and difficulties of preliminary design methodology a...