Using rotorcraft to explore extraterrestrial bodies will allow future missions to explore terrain that is inaccessible to traditional lander/rover missions, and will enable spacecraft to explore much larger distances than previous missions. The upcoming Mars 2020 Rover mission will include the Mars Helicopter (named Ingenuity), a small ($<2$ kg) counter-rotating co-axial vehicle, which, if successful, will be the first rotorcraft to fly on a non-terrestrial body. The Dragonfly mission, recently selected through the NASA New Frontier’s program, is expected to fly a much larger vehicle on Titan ($\sim 750$ kg) arriving in the early 2030s. On Earth it is commonly observed that both sub-scale and full-scale rotorcraft can mobilize sediment, to varying degrees of magnitude, when a vehicle is operating over regolith. In order to determine the feasibility of performing sediment mobilization experiments (e.g. saltation investigations) beneath a rotorcraft through intentional sediment mobilization (due to the wake produced by the rotating rotors) for future missions, the scaling of aerodynamic and aeolian parameters should be accounted for. Furthermore, in an extreme case, this analysis can also be used as a low-fidelity method to begin to understand any potential risk associated with brownout (large-scale sediment mobilization due to the helicopter rotor wake) to the rotorcraft itself. In this work, a scaling analysis is presented that allows a vehicle designer to quickly investigate the magnitude of sediment mobilization beneath a rotorcraft, without requiring detailed CFD simulations. The analysis confirms that the upcoming Mars Helicopter and Dragonfly missions could be used for sediment mobilization experiments.

使用旋翼飞行器探索地面物体将使未来的任务能够探索传统着陆器/漫游者任务无法进入的地形，并使航天器能够探索比以前的任务更大的距离。即将进行的火星2020 Rover任务将包括火星直升机（名为Ingenuity），$<2$千克）反向旋转同轴飞行器，如果成功，它将是首架在非地面物体上飞行的旋翼飞机。最近通过美国国家航空航天局“新边疆”计划选定的“蜻蜓”任务有望在“泰坦”号上飞行更大的飞行器（$〜750$公斤）到达2030年代初。在地球上，通常观察到，当车辆在重膏石上行驶时，子规模和全规模旋翼飞机都可以动员不同程度的沉积物。为了确定在旋翼飞行器下通过有意的泥沙动员（由于旋翼产生的尾流）而进行旋翼飞行器下方泥沙动员实验（例如盐分研究）的可行性，应考虑空气动力学和风沙参数的缩放比例。此外，在极端情况下，该分析还可以用作低保真度方法，以开始理解与旋翼飞机本身的电力不足（由于直升机旋翼唤醒而导致大规模泥沙动员）相关的任何潜在风险。在这项工作中 提出了比例分析，使车辆设计人员可以快速调查旋翼飞机下方的泥沙运动量，而无需进行详细的CFD模拟。分析证实，即将进行的火星直升机和蜻蜓任务可用于沉积物动员实验。