Advancing Rotorcraft Aerodynamics: Multi-Fidelity Approaches for Forward Flight Simulation in Fluent

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of two rotor modeling approaches in ANSYS Fluent for simulating rotorcraft aerodynamics in forward flight: the high-fidelity Sliding Mesh Method (SMM) and the medium-fidelity Virtual Blade Model (VBM). A recent enhancement to VBM—the Floating Disk Method (FDM)—is introduced, which eliminates the need for explicit rotor disk meshing and supports adaptive refinement. Simulations of the NASA ROBIN configuration are performed under two flight conditions to assess accuracy, computational efficiency, and modeling flexibility. Results demonstrate that while SMM offers superior resolution of unsteady flow features, VBM with FDM provides a computationally efficient alternative for rotorcraft simulations, offering flexibility for trimmed flight analysis, initial design studies, and parametric evaluations. The study highlights the trade-offs between fidelity and cost, offering practical guidance for selecting rotor modeling strategies in rotorcraft CFD applications.