Numerical simulation of air-launched rockets from a helicopter was conducted to investigate the initial aerodynamic stability and its plume effect. For this purpose, a three-dimensional inviscid flow solver has been developed based on unstructured mes...
Numerical simulation of air-launched rockets from a helicopter was conducted to investigate the initial aerodynamic stability and its plume effect. For this purpose, a three-dimensional inviscid flow solver has been developed based on unstructured meshes and an mesh technique was used to describe the relative motion between missile launcher and launched rockets. The flow solver was coupled with six degree-of-freedom equation to predict the trajectory of free-flight rockets. Simulation of air-launched rockets from a helicopter showed that rotor downwash has non-negligible effect on the initial stability of the rockets and its plume development.