Rotorcraft systems modelling for twin-engine heavy helicopter

The projected growth in air travel over the coming decades has been extensively documented in the open literature. Most of this growth comes from fixed wing aircraft travels, and therefore much research has been reported in this aircraft category. Much less documentation on the subject is available for the rotorcraft counterpart. Nevertheless, the environmental impact of rotorcraft should not be taken lightly. This research focuses on quantifying and reducing the negative environmental impact that rotorcraft operations have. This is achieved in particular by modelling the rotorcraft airframe systems and analyzing their environmental impact at mission level. This will be achieved by investigating the concept of a more-electric rotorcraft, in realizing the 'green rotorcraft' concept aspired to in the Clean Sky project. The Rotorcraft Mission Energy Management (RMEM) model is a tool developed which represents all of the secondary power generation and user systems on a rotorcraft. The RMEM simulates the onboard helicopter systems and determines, the shaft power and engine bleed air off-take requirements of each system for prescribed sets of flight conditions. For the purpose of demonstration, three generations of rotorcraft will be presented: the current, the near-term future and the medium-term future; with each generation having different levels of technology installed. A simulation of a mission case study will be presented which analyses the total shaft power off-take of each rotorcraft as a function of mission time.