Preliminary Application of Inverse Design to the HVAB Rotor Tip

An inverse design procedure was applied to the HVAB rotor to develop a modified tip geometry which would provide improved hover performance. The design was tested using the GT-Hybrid tool over a range of conditions and was found to consistently provide 2-3% improvement in the figure of merit. As a further check on the results, the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ multiphysics package was used to model the 10 degrees collective condition. Preliminary results show a performance improvement from the modified tip geometry that is consistent with that predicted by GT-Hybrid.