TOWARDS HYBRID TESTING FOR ROTORCRAFT COMFORT ASSESSMENT
PhDAER Seminar
September 12, 2025, from 16:00 until 18:00 - Sala Consiglio DAER, Building B12, 2nd Floor, Politecnico di Milano, Campus Bovisa, Via la Masa 34, Milano
The seminar will be available to follow at the following link: https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/pierangelo.masarati/
Rotorcraft are notorious for their high vibration levels, and occupant comfort remains one of the key challenges of vertical flight. Occupant comfort can be evaluated through numerical analysis or flight testing.
While numerical models are very useful in early design, they may fail to address uncertainty and non-linearity in seat and human biodynamics.
On the other hand, the tests can only be performed after flying prototypes are ready, which is a very late stage to make significant improvements.
A hybrid solution could reduce the drawbacks of both approaches by combining the flexibility of modern simulation tools with a physical set-up of seat and occupant; therefore, allowing realistic, safe and repeatable comfort evaluations at early design phases.
A hybrid testing framework offers evaluation of helicopter ride comfort through real-time coupling of a numerical model representing the loads and structural dynamics of the airframe and a physical model of the occupant.
The numerical helicopter model simulates the transmission of vibratory loads to the cabin floor, while a physical system consisting of a seat, cushion, and mannequin (or human) is placed on a multi-axis shaker table (MAST).
Speaker
Dr Aykut Tamer began his career as a Loads and Aeroelasticity Engineer at Turkish Aerospace Industries (2007-2011) before completing PhD in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in 2015. He continued at Politecnico di Milano as a Research Fellow (2015-2019) and then worked as a Research Associate at Imperial College London (2019-2023). He is now a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath. Dr Aykut Tamer's research focuses on aerospace design and simulation of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft with expertise in structural dynamics, aeroelasticity, nonlinear dynamics and vibration control.
4.9.2025