Politecnico di Milano: PhD Student Neda Taymourtash Wins ERF Chairman’s Award

Dr. Neda Taymourtash, a double PhD student in Aerospace Engineering of Politecnico di Milano and University of Glasgow won the Chairman’s award at the 47th European Rotorcraft Forum. It is one of the premier events for the rotorcraft community, bringing together manufacturers, research establishments, academia, operators and regulatory agencies to discuss advances in research and development.

Neda Taymourtash is part of the project NITROS, a H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Joint European Doctorate dedicated to Rotorcraft Safety.

The operation of rotorcraft close to the obstacles in windy conditions is often a complex task that increases significantly the pilot workload, due to the air turbulence created by the wind, to the interaction of the craft and to the flows generated by it. Flight testing is required to study those phenomena and understand the effects over flight security. However, it is frequently expensive and potentially hazardous. Computational tools can actually be helpful, but they too require experimental verification of their ability to grasp all aspects of phenomena of intrinsic complexity.

In this research it is proposed to pursue a different path, that will start directly from experimental measures carried out in real time and based on scale models of helicopters near obstacles conducted in the Polimi large wind tunnel environmental test section. These measurements can be used directly to represent the influence of the flow field on aircraft by using them directly within flight simulators. Such flight simulators can then be used to test robust approach strategies that can help the pilot reduce the additional workload in the presence of highly turbulent flow fields.

The path of our young researcher is already full of experiences. After a BSc in Aerospace Engineering and a MSc in Flight Control and Dynamics in Tehran, Neda Taymourtash was able to deepen her research interests in flight mechanics, flight simulation and advanced flight control methods at the universities of Brussels and Lausanne, before arriving at the Politecnico di Milano.

A part of her prize consists of a fully paid invitation to present her work on “Simulation and Testing of Helicopter-Ship Aerodynamic Interaction” to the next Asian/Australian Rotorcraft Forum, scheduled in late 2022.