Challenge: Helicopter flight in complex ship airwakes is a challenge for both simulation and pilot training.
Solution: The understanding of ship airwake phenomena, particularly their impact on helicopter operations aboard naval vessels, has been advanced by our team. Utilizing large-eddy simulations (LES), we analyzed how atmospheric boundary layers (ABLs) influence ship airwakes. Research revealed that ABLs introduce notable turbulence into the ship's airwake, leading to increased control inputs and aircraft movement during helicopter landing approaches and hover operations. Frequency-domain analysis indicated that ABL effects notably influence control inputs within the 0.1–3 Hz range, a frequency band associated with pilot workload, suggesting that ABL-induced turbulence can elevate pilot workload during shipboard operations. Further studies by highlighted that unsteady atmospheric conditions exacerbate the complexity of ship airwakes compared to steady sheared velocity profiles. This finding underscores the necessity of incorporating realistic atmospheric turbulence into simulations to enhance the fidelity of pilot-training programs for helicopter-ship dynamic interfaces. Now we are aiming to take this to real-time predictions.
(1) Thedin, R., Kinzel, M. P., Horn, J. F., & Schmitz, S. (2019). Coupled simulations of atmospheric turbulence-modified ship airwakes and helicopter flight dynamics. Journal of Aircraft, 56(2), 812-824.
(2) Thedin, Regis, Michael P. Kinzel, and Sven Schmitz. "An evaluation of the effects of resolved shear-driven atmospheric turbulence on ship airwakes." Journal of the American Helicopter Society 63.2 (2018): 1-16.
(3) Thedin, Regis, Michael P. Kinzel, and Sven Schmitz. "Simulation of a helicopter-ship dynamic interface using offline database of atmospheric turbulence-modified airwake." Annual Forum Proceedings-AHS International. Vol. 2018. American Helicopter Society, 2018.
