A General Theory of Potential Aerodynamics with Applications to Helicopter Rotor-Fuselage Interaction

This work presents a boundary-integral-equation methodology for the aerodynamic analysis of unsteady, subsonic, compressible, potential flows around N bodies, each having arbitrary shape and motion, with applications to rotor-fuselage configurations. Starting from the differential problem, the unknown is expressed in terms of a boundary integral representation, which is given by the sum of integrals over the surfaces of the N bodies. The novelty is that each contribution is expressed in a frame of reference rigidly connected to the corresponding body. This fact simplifies considerably both the derivation of the formulation and the evaluation of the surface integrals (since in this case one deals with integrals over time-independent surfaces). In this paper, first we present the boundary integral formulation for N surfaces including one that surrounds the wake and is rigidly-connected to the undisturbed air.