Modeling and Simulation of Ship–Helicopter Dynamic Interface: Method and Application

Modeling and simulation of the ship–helicopter dynamic interface is still a challenging technical problem despite the great development in the decades of research. Herein, a systematical review of various issues of ship–helicopter dynamic interface simulation is presented, with particular emphasis on the modeling methods in airwake and flight simulation and their applications. The review covers turbulence models used in the ship airwake simulation, and the modeling of atmospheric turbulence layer and the ship motion effect. The methods of ship–helicopter coupling airwake simulation are emphatically discussed, including actuator disk model and resolved blade method. CFD–based ship airwake models employed in flight simulation are summarized, including lookup table, proper orthogonal decomposition reconstruction, and stochastic airwake model. Control equivalent turbulence input model and its scaling technique are also included, as well as its adaption. The coverage further includes the off-line simulation focusing on pilot model and workload metric and the piloted simulation with emphasis on some fidelity sensitivity issues. Finally, some conclusions and suggestions for future investigations are given. The aim of the review is to provide a guidance for ship–helicopter dynamic interface simulation and to further identify the inherent limitations and difficulties.