JAXA Supercomputer System Annual Report April 2019-March 2020

Report Number: R19EA3304

Subject Category: Aeronautical Technology

PDF available here

• Responsible Representative: Yoshikazu Makino, Director, Aviation Systems Research Unit, Aero
• Contact Information: Yasutada Tanabe, Senior Researcher, Aviation Systems Research Unit, Aeronautical Technology Directorate, JAXA(tan@chofu.jaxa.jp)
• Members: Yasutada Tanabe, Noboru Kobiki, Masahiko Sugiura, Hideaki Sugawara

Abstract

Aiming to achieve a flight speed as high as twice of the conventional helicopters, a new concept of compound helicopter is proposed. Key technologies such the system integration, remarkable reduction of the aerodynamic drag and optimized rotor design are investigated.

Reference URL

Please refer to ‘Future type rotary-airfoil airplane system technology | Sky Frontier – Sky Frontier Program | Aeronautical Technology Directorate‘.

Reasons and benefits of using JAXA Supercomputer System

The newly proposed compound helicopter utilizes 4 rotor/propellers. CFD analysis involving the whole aircraft requires large amount of memories and long-time computations. Super-computers such as the JSS2 is a must infrastructure for this kind of research.

Achievements of the Year

To obtain validation data for CFD analysis, a compound helicopter scaled-down model was tested in a wind-tunnel. A flap is added to the fixed-wing under the main rotor, the landing gear can be stored inside the fuselage during forward flight and a fairing is added to the main rotor hub to further reduce the drag of the aircraft. Also, to reduced the drag caused by the rotor/wing interaction, a new technology is propsed and it is confirmed through wind-tunnel testing and also CFD simulations. Samples of overlapped moving grids used by rFlow3D, a CFD code specificly developed for rotorcraft is shown in Fig. 1. A flowfield around a rotor and a fixed-wing is shown in Fig. 2. A sample of CFD analysis for a whole compound helicopter is shown in Fig. 3.

Fig.1: Moving overlapped grids for rFlow3D

Fig.2: Flowfield around a rotor with a fixed-wing

Fig.3: A sample of CFD analysis for a full configurated compound helicopter

Publications

– Peer-reviewed papers

1) Hideki Sugawara, Yasutada Tanabe: Numerical Investigation of Rotor/Wing Aerodynamic Interactions at High Advance Ratios, Journal of Aircraft,Vol. 56, No. 6, pp.2285-2298, November-December 2019.

– Non peer-reviewed papers

1) Hideaki Sugawara, Yasutada Tanabe, Masaharu Kameda, Effect of Lift Share Ratio on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Winged Compound Helicopter, 8th Asian/Australian Rotorcraft Forum, Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 30 – Nov. 2, 2019.

Usage of JSS2

Computational Information

• Process Parallelization Methods: N/A
• Thread Parallelization Methods: OpenMP
• Number of Processes: 1
• Elapsed Time per Case: 240 Hour(s)

Resources Used

Fraction of Usage in Total Resources*1(%): 0.35

Details

Please refer to System Configuration of JSS2 for the system configuration and major specifications of JSS2.

*1: Fraction of Usage in Total Resources: Weighted average of three resource types (Computing, File System, and Archiver).

*2: Fraction of Usage：Percentage of usage relative to each resource used in one year.

JAXA Supercomputer System Annual Report April 2019-March 2020