Two UW Professors Share in Award for Outstanding Rotorcraft Research

June 13, 2013
Computerized image of helicopter
Dimitri Mavriplis, a UW professor of mechanical engineering, and Jay Sitaraman, a UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering, are part of the HELIOS software development team that won the 2013 Schroers Award for Outstanding Rotorcraft Research from the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the American Helicopter Society. Mavriplis created the solver (red region) that resolves aerodynamics close to the rotorcraft. (Dimitri Mavriplis Photo)

Two University of Wyoming faculty members are part of the HELIOS software development team that won the 2013 Schroers Award for Outstanding Rotorcraft Research from the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the American Helicopter Society (AHS).

Dimitri Mavriplis, a UW professor of mechanical engineering; and Jay Sitaraman, a UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering,  were part of the 11-member team that was honored for its multiyear effort  to bring multiscale and multidisciplinary physics to the entire rotorcraft technical community, including industry, government and academia. The award will be presented at a chapter awards banquet June 13 (today) in Mountain View, Calif.

The software consists of three primary modules, two of for which Mavriplis and Sitaraman are responsible.

“I am the author of the solver that resolves the aerodynamics close to the rotorcraft, i.e. on the fuselage and rotor,” Mavriplis says. “The other solver resolves the wake and other aspects of the flow further away from the body. The two solvers communicate with each other in regions of overlaps.”

Sitaraman is responsible for the component that links these two solvers together.

“This award recognizes our contributions toward improving the state-of-the-art helicopter simulations,” Sitaraman says. “HELIOS is arguably the most capable rotorcraft simulation software available anywhere in the world.”

The HELIOS software development project is part of the CREATE-AV Project funded by the Department of Defense’s (DOD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

“HELIOS has enabled rotorcraft simulations that are an order of magnitude more accurate and efficient than previously possible, and will be the basis for rotorcraft simulations for the next decade within the Department of Defense,” Mavriplis says.

The winning group includes two others with UW connections. Mark Potsdam was a UW visiting senior researcher during 2008-09; and Nick Burgess is a former UW doctoral student who previously worked under Mavriplis.

Award recipients are selected annually by a special advisory board chaired by the past chapter president. Nominations are submitted by members of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter AHS.

The award is named in honor of the late Laurel “Shorty” Schroers, who served as the flight test director for the Army/NASA XV-15 development program. Schroers was a longtime member of the Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft Project Office at Ames Research Center, which is located in Silicon Valley.

The AHS International is the world’s oldest and largest technical society dedicated to enhancing the understanding of vertical flight technology. The society, founded in 1943, iadvances the theory and practices of vertical flight aircraft science.

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