The Board of the San Fransisco Bay Area Chapter recognized the recipients of the 2023 chapter awards at the annual Awards Banquet held on August 9, 2023 in Mountain View, CA. Recipients of the awards are selected annually, from nominations submitted by SFBAC VFS members, by a special advisory board. These awards are an opportunity for the local VFS Chapter to recognize the outstanding work and significant accomplishments achieved by the VTOL technical community.
Velkoff Award for Outstanding Paper
Norman et. al for their paper “Fundamental Test of a Hovering Rotor: Comprehensive Measurements for CFD Validation” presented at the Vertical Flight Society’s 79th Annual Forum & Technology Display. Their research improves understanding of rotor dynamics and aerodynamics including airfoil boundary layer transition, blade deflections, rotor wake geometry including unsteadiness, and the flow field 3D velocity field.
Schroers Award for Outstanding Rotorcraft Research
NASA/Army HVAB Rotor Test Team for providing detailed test data of a 11-ft diameter, four-bladed rotor, using a variety of measurements. The HVAB test includes thermography, photogrammetry, shadowgraphy, and particle image velocimetry. This comprehensive rotor dataset will inform the next generation of high performance rotorcraft designs.
Franklin Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Powered Lift Field
Side by Side 7×10 Wind Tunnel Urban Air Mobility Team for their test campaign that experimentally assess optimum spacing between rotor systems for aerodynamic performance.
Outstanding Technical Support
Shirley Burek for her support of the Aeromechanics branch with every test program that has occurred in the past 10+ years. With Shirley’s support, the Aeromechanics branch has met project milestones and goals for challenging recent and planned test campaigns.
Outstanding Contribution to the AHS local Chapter
Carl Russell has served on the San Fransisco Bay Area Chapter’s board for over a decade in a variety of positions, including president. No matter the position, Carl has always offered to help other board members and give advice with the execution of their duties. He has assisted with and/or led the planning and execution of speaker seminars, community outreach events, the biennial technical specialist conference, the annual chapter awards banquet and much more.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Roger Strawn’s contributions to rotorcraft computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with the US Army over the last 38 years are indispensable to the development of rotorcraft. He pioneered the Full Potential Rotor, Adaptive Mesh Refinement, CFD/CSD coupling and other tools and capabilities that are essential for rotorcraft CFD performance and efficiency. Roger Strawn took leadership over Army’s Helios program in 2009. In that time, Helios pushed the boundaries of high-fidelity rotorcraft aeromechanics modeling and simulation.
Dr. Ron Du Val contributed to the development of rotorcraft flight dynamics technology in both the government and industry. Ron Du Val joined the Ames Research Center (ARC) where he worked with engineers at the Flight Simulator for Advanced Aircraft (FSAA) to adapt their real-time blade element simulation of the Rotor Systems Research Aircraft (RSRA) for use in off-line analysis. He then left NASA in 1982 to form Advanced Rotorcraft Technology, Inc. (ART). ART’s simulation software products, FLIGHTLAB and Rotorcraft Comprehensive Analysis System (RCAS), have become Industry standards for simulation support of rotorcraft engineering and training applications.