A Wake-Resolved Aeroelastic Framework for Rotor Blade Load Prediction in Forward Flight

Rotor blades operating in forward flight exhibit pronounced aeroelastic responses driven by unsteady aerodynamic loads, inertial coupling, and wake-induced effects. Accurate prediction of trimmed blade loads therefore requires a fluid–structure interaction framework that resolves both structural nonlinearity and unsteady wake dynamics. In this study, a mid-fidelity aeroelastic analysis framework is developed by coupling a Geometrically Exact Beam Theory (GEBT)-based structural solver with a Vortex Particle Method (VPM)-based aerodynamic solver, DUST. The framework resolves large blade deformation and wake evolution while retaining computational efficiency suitable for iterative trim analysis. Data exchange and mapping between the structural and aerodynamic solvers are handled through the preCICE coupling library. A loosely coupled strategy is employed, in which trimmed solutions are obtained using a δ-airload method during successive coupling iterations. The proposed framework is validated using the HART-II rotor for the baseline (BL), Minimum Noise (MN), and Minimum Vibration (MV) cases. The predicted structural and aerodynamic responses show good agreement with the reference data, demonstrating that the mid-fidelity coupled framework is capable of capturing key aeroelastic characteristics of rotor blades in forward flight.