Winner Kooy Prize 2020: Laurent Declerck
Predicting flight behaviour of helicopters
Although the Kooy Symposium 2020 could not take place due to the corona crisis, this year's Kooy Prize was awarded. 2.000 Euro and eternal fame was awarded by the jury to Laurent Declerck. He researched the performance and flight characteristics of compound helicopters as part of his aerospace engineering degree at TU Delft. A major part of his research involved the development and validation of a new computer model to simulate these properties.
As many as thirteen submissions were received for review by the Kooy Prize Committee at the end of 2019. From these, a shortlist of seven candidates was first distilled from which the prize winner was determined. Bart Koene, chairman of the jury, KIVI board member and senior lecturer at the NLDA: "It was actually all entries of high quality which already made it difficult to make a preselection at all. Based on our assessment criteria, the evaluation of the different judges clearly led to Laurent Declerck in the end."
Helicopters research area is bigger
Declerck started studying at TU Delft's Faculty of Aerospace Engineering in 2012. "My interest lies mainly in helicopters because there is more design scope to optimise the performance of helicopters compared to civil aircraft."
Through his main supervisor Prof Dr Mark Voskuijl - former TU Delft employee and now working as a professor at the Netherlands Defence Academy - he came across so-called compound helicopters. This is a kind of cross between a helicopter and an aircraft that can take off vertically like a helicopter but can then reach much higher speeds similar to an aeroplane. Declerck: "To properly simulate the flight characteristics of this particular machine and develop optimal control, it is important to understand very fundamentally what forces are at play here, what loads are involved and how everything affects each other. I stood with a stretched arm quite a few times to find out exactly what happens to the blades and the rotor system."
Final report
Among other things, his research has included the development and validation of a new computer model that can be used to simulate the flight behaviour of these compound helicopters. The results obtained from this simulation model provide insights into the best strategy to perform manoeuvres at high flight speeds. Here, critical dynamic loads (maintenance), flight characteristics and aircraft performance were simultaneously taken into account. By making smart use of the flight controls, the dynamic loads on critical structural components can be significantly reduced while maintaining flight characteristics.
His final report was entitled: Feasibility study of a load alleviation strategy on a compound helicopter using redundant controls. It was awarded 9.0 by his graduation supervisors were Prof Dr M Voskuijl (Netherlands Defence Academy) and Prof C J Simão Ferreira (TU Delft).
Prize
In the end, Mark Voskuijl submitted his report for the Kooy Prize which led to Laurent winning. "I am of course thrilled to have won the 2020 Kooy Prize; it feels like recognition from independent parties for what you have done. In any case, I will write another publication on this - it is in the finalisation phase - and furthermore, I am doing research at the startup 'Flying Fish'. Here, we are software simulating the performance and characteristics of a hydrofoil. These have many similarities to an aircraft only they are not carried by air but by water. When we understand the dynamics and controls well, we can increase efficiency and drastically reduce consumption."
Due to the corona crisis, the award was presented 'online'. A video of this can be found at https://youtu.be/81Q6XonQC2s.
The jury
The jury consisted of Dr L. (Bart) Koene (Jury chairman and board member KIVI DV, NLDA), Ing L.F. Galle (Ministry of Defence, Materiel Directorate), Prof.dr.ir. P.H.A.J.M. van Gelder (TU Delft), Prof. Dr B.R.H.M. Haverkort (Tilburg University), Prof. Dr F.E. van Vliet (TNO, University of Twente), Prof. Dr P.J. Oonincx (NLDA) and Ms Prof. Dr M.I.A. Stoelinga (University of Twente, Radboud University).
www.kooysymposium.nl
