The Society's Annual Forum & Technology Display is the world's leading international technical event on vertical flight technology. The three-day meeting includes more than 200 technical papers on every discipline from Acoustics to Unmanned Systems. Forum Proceedings papers can be purchased as individual pdf files or as CD-ROMs from the Society's Online Store.
Every year, the best paper in each technical discipline is selected by the Society's Technical Committees. All of the best papers from each technical discipline from every Annual Forum since 2001 – including the overall Alfred Gessow Best Paper Award since 2004 – are recognized as some of the most important technical contributions in the field of vertical flight.
The Forum 71 (2015) winning technical papers are linked below.
| Technical Area | Title of Paper | Author(s) |
|
Winner of the Alfred Gessow Forum Best Paper Award (HUMS/CBM) |
A Smart Position Sensor for Articulated Rotors | Troy Schank, Bell Helicopter; Kynn Schulte, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. |
| Acoustics | A Maneuvering Flight Noise Model for Helicopter Mission Planning | Eric Greenwood, NASA Langley Research Center; Benjamin May and Christopher Hobbs, Wyle; Robert Rau, NASA Langley Research Center |
| Advanced Vertical Flight | Development of a Quad-Rotor Biplane MAV with High Roll Control Authority | Christopher Bogdanowicz, University of Maryland; Vikram Hrishikeshavan and Inderjit Chopra, Copy Institution |
| Aerodynamics | Collaborative Investigation of the Aerodynamics Behavior of Airfoils in Reverse Flow | Joachim Hodara and Marilyn Smith, Georgia Institute of Technology; Andrew Lind and Anya Jones, University of Maryland |
| Aircraft Design | Conceptual Design of Environmentally Friendly Rotorcraft – A Comparison of NASA and ONERA Approaches | Carl Russell, NASA Ames Research Center; Pierre-Marie Basset, ONERA |
| Aircraft Design | A Toolbox for Rotorcraft Preliminary Design | Max Lier, Alex Krenik, Philipp Kunze, Dieter Kohlgrüber, Marius Lützenburger and Dominik Schwinn, German Aerospace Center (DLR) |
| Avionics and Systems | Joint Common Architecture (JCA) Demonstration Architecture Centric Virtual Integration Process (ACVIP) Shadow Effort | Alex Boydston and Bruce Lewis, US Army Aviation & Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center; Peter Feiler, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute; Steve Vestal, Adventium Labs |
| Crash Safety | The Development of Two Composite Energy Absorbers for Use in a Transport Rotorcraft Airframe Crash Testbed (TRACT 2) Full-Scale Crash Test | Justin Littell and Karen Jackson and Martin Annett, NASA Langley Research Center; Edwin Fasanella, National Institute of Aerospace; Michael Seal, Analytical Mechanics Associates, Inc. |
| Crew Stations and Human Factors | Development of a Magneto-Rheological Fluid-Based Trim Actuator with Active Tactile Cueing Capabilities | Guifré Julió, and Jean-Sébastien Plante, Exonetics Design Inc.; Geoffrey Latham, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. |
| Dynamics | Investigation of Rotor Vibratory Loads of a UH-60A Individual Blade Control System | Hyeonsoo Yeo and Rohit Jain, U.S. Army Aviation Development Directorate - AFDD; Buvana Jayaraman, Science and Technology Corp. |
| Handling Qualities | Preliminary Investigation into Rotorcraft Pilot Strategy and Visual Cueing Effects in the Shipboard Environment | John Tritschler, John O'Connor and David Arteche, U.S. Naval Test Pilot School; James Pritchard, Ryan Wallace, and Daniel Eksuzian, Naval Air Systems Command |
| Health and Usage Monitoring Systems | A Smart Position Sensor for Articulated Rotors | Troy Schank, Bell Helicopter; Kynn Schulte, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. |
| History | The U.S. ARMY’s CH-54 Skycrane Helicopter: History and Contributions | Paul J. Fardink |
| Manufacturing Technology and Processing | Utilizing Additive Manufacturing / 3-D Printing to Optimize Design and Support Solutions for One-Off Spares and Support Product Requirements | Thomas Reilly and Dominic Przano, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. |
| Modeling and Simulation | Physics-Based Aerodynamic Simulation Models Suitable for Dynamic Behavior of Complex Bluff Body Configurations | Daniel T. Prosser and Marilyn J. Smith, Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Operations | Numerical Simulations and Measurements of the Wake from a Helicopter Operating in Ground Effect | Masahiko Sugiura, Yasutada Tanabe, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; Hideaki Sugawara, Ryoyu Systems Co., Ltd.; Hirokazu Ishii, and Naoki Matayoshi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency |
| Product Support Systems Technology | Development and Testing of a Ground Based Health and Maintenance Reasoner | James P. Cotter and Mark Davis, Sikorsky; Treven Baker, Army ADD-AATD |
| Propulsion | Turbomachinery Blade Thermomechnical Interface Science | Anindya Ghoshal, Muthuvel Murugan, Blake Barnett, Michael Walock, and Marc Pepi, US Army Research Laboratory; Kevin Kerner, Applied Aviation Technology Development Directorate |
| Structures and Materials | Integration of 3D Scan Data into the Finite Element Analysis Workflow for Simulation of Rotorcraft Components | Jonathan Knoll, and Jeffrey Nissen, Bell Helicopter |
| System Engineering Tools/Processes | An Approach to Military Airworthiness Certification of a Previously Developed Helicopter from a Flying Qualities Perspective | Benjamin Kangas and Kevin Schurek, The Boeing Company; Bram Renier, AgustaWestland |
| Test and Evaluation | Development and Testing of the AW609 All-Engines-Inoperative Emergency Re-Conversion | Dan Wells and Paul Edwards, AgustaWestland Philadelphia Company |
| Test and Evaluation | ONERA S1MA Wind Tunnel Testing Capabilities of a Modern Tilt Rotor | Frederic Lebrun, Dominique Munier, Julien Decours and Philippe Beaumier, ONERA |
| Unmanned VTOL Aircraft and Rotorcraft | Development of a 500 gram Vision-based Autonomous Quadrotor Vehicle Capable of Indoor Navigation | Stephen Haviland, Dmitry Bershadsky, Daniel Magree and Eric Johnson, Georgia Institute of Technology |