The Vertical Flight Society's Annual Forum & Technology Display is the world's leading international technical event on vertical flight technology. This year, the four-day virtual meeting included more than 228 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 Vertical Flight Online Library.
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 2004 – including the overall Alfred Gessow Best Paper Award – are recognized as some of the most important technical contributions in the field of vertical flight.
The Forum 76 winning technical papers are linked below.
Technical Area | Title of Paper | Author(s) |
Acoustics: Winner of the Alfred Gessow Forum Best Paper Award | Development and Validation of Generic Maneuvering Flight Noise Abatement Guidance for Helicopters | James H. Stephenson, US Army CCDC AvMC; Michael E. Watts, Analytical Mechanics Associates, Inc.; Eric Greenwood, Penn State University; Kyle A. Pascioni, NASA Langley Research Center |
Advanced Vertical Flight (a tie between the two papers) | Design, Development and Flight Testing of a Gun-Launched Rotary-Wing Micro Air Vehicle | Hunter Denton, Moble Benedict, Texas A&M University; Hao Kang, US Army CCDC ARL; Vikram Hrishikeshavan, University of Maryland |
Experimental Measurements and Low-Order Modeling of Stacked Rotor Performance in Hover | Chloe Johnson, Jayant Sirohi, University of Texas at Austin | |
Aerodynamics | Numerical and Experimental Investigation into the Aerodynamic Benefits of Rotorcraft Formation Flight | Mark Voskuijl, Jan de Vries, Finbar van der Veen, Netherlands Defence Academy; Ramon Duivenvoorden, Delft University of Technology; Lars Moree, Royal Netherlands Air Force |
Aircraft Design | Investigation of BERP-Shape Tip Design on an Apache Rotor Blade | Ronny Widjaja, Defence Science and Technology Group; Joon W. Lim, Rohit Jain, Mark Potsdam, US Army Combat Capability Development Command AvMC ARC |
Avionics & Systems | Stability Augmentation System for Coaxial Ultralight Helicopters | Tobias Richter, Benjamin Rothaupt, Alexander Steinwandel, Walter Fichter, University of Stuttgart; Benedikt Grebing, edm aerotec GmbH |
Crash Safety | Crashworthiness of a Lift Plus Cruise eVTOL Vehicle Design within Dynamic Loading Environments | Jacob Putnam, Justin Littell, NASA Langley Research Center |
Crew Stations & Human Factors | Multisensory Cueing to Resolve Helicopter Drift Detection in DVE | Angus Rupert, DRIP; Braden McGrath, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Bruce Mortimer, Engineering Acoustics Inc.; J. Christopher Brill, Air Force Research Lab |
Dynamics | Tiltrotor Conversion Maneuver Analysis with RCAS | Hyeonsoo Yeo, US Army CCDC AvMC; Hossein Saberi, Advanced Rotorcraft Technology, Inc. |
Handling Qualities | Outer-Loop Control Design and Simulation Handling Qualities Assessment for a Coaxial-Compound Helicopter and Tiltrotor | Tom Berger, Mark B. Tischler, US Army CCDC Aviation & Missile Center; Joseph F. Horn, Pennsylvania State University |
Health and Usage Monitoring Systems | Bell 525 Relentless — Using Tail Rotor Torque Measurements for Maintenance Credit | Brian Tucker, Drew Waller, Ankit Patel, Bell Textron Inc. |
History | The Aircraft, the Rotorcraft and the Life of Walter Rieseler 1890-1937 | Berend G. van der Wall, German Aerospace Center (DLR) |
Manufacturing Tech. & Processing | Bell 505 Automation at Final Assembly - Project Octopus | Cédric Roche, Bell Textron |
Modeling & Simulation | Enhancement and Validation of VPM-Derived State-Space Inflow Models for Multi-Rotor Simulation | Matthew Gladfelter, Chengjian He, Chongseok Chang, Advanced Rotorcraft Technology, Inc.; Mark B. Tischler, Mark J. S. Lopez, US Army CCDC Aviation & Missile Center; Ondrej Juhasz, US Naval Academy |
Operations | Dragonfly : Defining Environments for Rotorcraft Flight on Titan | Ralph D. Lorenz, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory |
Product Support Systems Technology | Leveraging Additive Manufacturing for Low-Volume, Out-of-Production Spare Parts | Thomas G. Reilly, Bell Textron Inc. |
Propulsion | Development of a Brushless DC Motor Sizing Algorithm for a Small UAS Design Framework | Farid Saemi, Moble Benedict, Texas A&M University; Nathan Beals, Army Research Laboratory |
Safety | Status and Way Forward on Rotorcraft Lightning Protection | Sonia Zehar, Marc Meyer, Bernard Tagliana, Airbus Helicopters |
Structures & Materials | Structural Integrity Challenges for Future Rotorcraft Programs | Robert Benton, US Army CCDC Aviation & Missile Center |
Systems Engineering Tools & Processes | Advances in Property Model Methodology (PMM®) | Louis Fabre, Christian Gaurel, Nicolas Martignago, Airbus Helicopters; Patrice Micouin, Micouin Consulting; Pascal Pandolfi, Pascal Paper, Thomas Razafimahefa, Airbus Helicopters |
Test & Evaluation | GPS-BASED Airspeed Calibration for Rotorcraft: Generalized Application for All Flight Regimes | Denis Hamel, Alexander Kolarich, Airbus Helicopters, Inc. |
Unmanned VTOL | Atmospheric Sampling in Urban Areas and Complex Terrain using UAS Swarms | Jared Cooper, David Neal, Barron Associates, Inc.; Stephan De Wekker, University of Virginia; Adam Reed, Barron Associates, Inc.; Alex R. Andrekanic, Matthew S. Paulini, Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate |