A multi-disciplinary toolbox for rotorcraft design

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is currently developing a multidisciplinary toolbox for the design of conventional and unconventional rotorcraft. The resulting design process will be the result of the DLR-internal project EDEN (Evaluation and DEsign of Novel rotorcraft concepts), which is a joint study between the Institute of Flight Systems, the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology and the Institute of Structures and Design. The complexity of rotorcraft design requires the development of the tools directly by the specialists of the respective institutes, where the tools are continuously refined and published to authorized users. The integration of the tools into a suitable software framework and the harmonization of the tools among each other are presented. This framework delivers a high level of modularity making the layout and testing of the process very flexible. The implemented tools cover the conceptual and preliminary design phases. The design process starts with an empty workspace and the minimum input of payload mass, range, cruise speed, number of rotor blades and a rotor configuration. Not only conventional main/tail rotor configurations can be designed, but also some other configurations with more than one main rotor. The fundamental concept behind the layout of the tools inside the process is demonstrated, especially the use of scaling and optimization loops. The process includes statistical methods to initialize the dataset, methods with more sophisticated physical models for the scaling task and finite element methods for the best possible prediction of the structural properties quite early in the design process.

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