Baseline Simulated Ship-Helicopter Operating Limits for the NATO Generic Destroyer

The NATO Generic Destroyer (NATO-GD) is a conceptual generic combat ship, for which the geometry is freely available, and that has been developed to enable and encourage collaborative international research into the helicopter-ship dynamic interface (HSDI), i.e., the modeling and simulation of helicopter launch and recovery to ships. The purpose of this paper is to provide the HSDI research community with a baseline Ship-Helicopter Operating Limits (SHOL) diagram for a generic helicopter landing to the NATO-GD. The generic helicopter is based on the open-source GenHel flight dynamics model, which is also available within the commercially available aircraft simulation software, FLIGHTLAB. The SHOL was established by an experienced test pilot in a full-motion helicopter flight simulator. By making the generic SHOL diagram available, and in providing detail about how it was established, the intention is that it can be used as a reference point for future HSDI modeling and simulation research.