Duke University has purchased a Bell 206B-3 Jet Ranger helicopter that is being equipped with various sensors and instruments to establish a helicopter observation platform (HOP). This platform is capable of sampling undisturbed air at airspeeds as low as 10-20 m/s and up to approximately 60 m/s, at various altitudes from a few feet above the ground surface to well above the top of the atmospheric boundary layer. Thus, it offers a very unique airborne capability for quantifying, among others, aerosol properties and fluxes of heat, water and trace gases that affect air quality, and, as a result, human health. These same processes are important components of the weather and climate system. The HOP can also be used conveniently and efficiently for carrying out remotely-sensed observations of atmospheric and land-surface characteristics with arbitrarily high resolution using lidars, radars and other instruments.
The goals of the two-year project are to (1) calibrate the sensors currently mounted on the HOP (including the filtering of vibrations), and (2) study in detail the aerodynamic envelope of the HOP using a combination of a computational fluid dynamic software and the calibrated sensors. The purpose of the latter is to assess the optimal flight airspeed range for research missions. The overall objective of this project is to continue the development phase of the HOP, and progress toward the goal of making available to the scientific community a unique platform for atmospheric and environmental research.
The intellectual merit of this project is that it tackles the very fundamental problem of measuring trace gas fluxes and aerosols characteristics from a unique aircraft platform with a complex aerodynamic envelope, providing unique observational capabilities.
The broader impact comes from progress made towards bringing the HOP to a state of readiness to participate in various field experiments to elucidate processes relevant to meteorological, climate and health research. While operated by a commercial company contracted by Duke University, the HOP will be available to all investigators within the broad scientific community for research projects needing its capabilities.
