Author: Nikos Trembois

The Board of the San Fransisco Bay Area Chapter recognized the recipients of the 2024 chapter awards, during our annual Awards Banquet held on August 15th, 2024. Guest speaker Dr. Jason Cornelius presented the progress and ongoing efforts of Dragonfly.

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 Technical Paper

Dr.’s Jason Cornelius and Sven Schmitz for their paper, “Dragonfly Rotor Optimization using Machine Learning Applied to an OVERFLOW Generated Airfoil Database”. This paper focuses on rotor design aspects of the Dragonfly lander and introduces a novel framework leveraging machine learning methods for multirotor design optimization considering multiple flight conditions.

Schroers Award for Outstanding Rotorcraft Research 

Awarded to the Helios Development Team: Jay Sitaraman, Beatrice Roget, Dylan Jude, Shirzad Hosseinverdi, Pavithra Premaratne, Jennifer Abras, Robert Trigg, Jared Sagaga, and Andrew Bodling.  Over the past years Helios developers have made significant contributions to advance the state-of-the-art modeling capabilities, adding new features, updating algorithms, improving usability, and providing user support to their high fidelity rotorcraft simulation code.

Franklin Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Powered-Lift Field 

Ingenuity Flight Test Program, led by Tove Ågren, Allen Ruan, Shannah Withrow, Carlos Malpica, received this award for their Sys-ID test campaign on Mars. The test provided insight into how Ingenuity flies on Mars and the demonstrated methods will inform future mars rotorcraft activities.

Outstanding Technical Support Award

Awarded to Mr. Sheikman for preparing for the UAM OARF Outwash Experiment, ROAMX rotor testing, support of the Mars Science Helicopter and future testing of the Multirotor Test Bed.  His technical expertise and mentorship are truly invaluable to the experimental rotorcraft work that takes place at NASA Ames.

Outstanding Contribution to the VFS local Chapter 

Awarded to the SFBAC 2024 Transformative Vertical Flight Arrangements Team for their efforts in organizing the VFS Transformative Vertical Flight meeting, including the 6^th Decennial Aeromechanics Specialists’ Conference and other associated events. This team includes Meridith Segall, Wayne Johnson, Robert Ormiston, Carl Russell, Christopher Silva, Sarah Conley, Kristen Kallstrom, Michelle Dominguez, Lauren Weist, and Athena Chan.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Matthew Whalley conducted groundbreaking and impactful research and made significant and unwavering contributions to the rotorcraft community in the field of unmanned systems and autonomy. His pioneering work in aerial autonomy has profoundly impacted Army and industry’s knowledge and capabilities in the field and positioned him not only as a subject matter expert but as a rotorcraft futurist. 

Dr. Gloria Yamauchi dedicated over forty years to the advancement of rotorcraft technology and the goals and objectives of the vertical flight community. She conducted individual world class research, and her leadership of NASA’s rotorcraft effort has sustained and ensured a bright future for the entire vertical lift community.

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.