Modeling the tiltrotor shipboard flight test environment

The shipboard flight test environment can present a hostile scenario to both conventional rotorcraft and tiltrotor aircraft. The aircraft configuration is not typically optimized for the ship airwake turbulence, ship motion, or the confined landing area factors that make shipboard operational requirements unique. Recent tiltrotor control difficulties were encountered during aircraft testing operations aboard an amphibious class ship. It is important to determine the effects of the primary shipboard landing parameters to help support future at-sea testing. Ongoing analytic efforts are required to evaluate the effect of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) ship airwake model on blade element tiltrotor aircraft models for the shipboard landing task. Air vehicle model tradeoffs required to achieve a real time capability need to be evaluated. This paper reviews the set-up of a tiltrotor blade element model, initial model validation and real time piloted shipboard landing simulation, plus assessment of the analytic model capability to support future rotorcraft/ship.