Slashdot Mirror
Human Powered Helicopter
marcopo writes "In response to a 24 year old prize challenge from the American Helicopter Society, a number of engineering students at the University of British Columbia have designed a human powered helicopter. The prize requirements are 3 minutes flight at 3 meters, with only human power, and the team, led by UBC's Mike Georgallis, plans a test flight next Tuesday.
The Vancouver Sun also has the
story."
12.) WILL IT FLY? The machine is heavier than originally designed... The unknown at the moment is whether the machine will break up prior to lift off. Whether or not any system will break up becomes all the more relevant when it involves humans and rotating blades.
Well, project cost is ambigous, as it may include research and things like that. The cost to produce another might be less.
First of all, three meters isn't all that much, it's roughly 10 feet. Second, you're not surrounded by that much metal cogs and chains. As you pointed out they want to reduce weight, so almost the entire thing is built of composites. Further, if you read about the design, they are favouring larger, slower-moving rotors and associated equipment over faster smaller ones. Thirdly, any engineer worth his salt would take time to make sure that if the machine DID fall from 3 meters, the supports for the person/seat could be constructed to collapse and absorb the shock.
Finally, as with most under-powered helicopters, the most likely mode of failure is only being able to hop a couple feet off the ground, if they can lift off at all. Read up some helicopter flying books sometime, it's pretty inderesting how much more the ground effect affects them than fixed wing aircraft. This post is much longer than inteded, so I'll cut here with the conclusion that I if I could fly helicopters, I'd jump on this opportunity in seconds. That said, flying a helicopter is probably one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do (I'm a fixed-wing pilot).
What a boneheaded idea to point the article link to the splash page showing a cute jpg logo.
We don't want to steal the bandwidth. We want to read the article AND steal the bandwidth. No, nevermind, I don't think they want to read the article either.
Nice font on the picture.
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
Considering that the UBC athletes have been called THUNDERBIRDS for quite some time, if this naming interferes with the MF's trademark, the MF has already lost it for not defending their trademark beforehand.
This was only a concept flight, you would be better off saving money with cheaper heavier material and adding an engine.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
If the machine breaks apart, then yes, you are probably in trouble. But if all that happens is a chain slips, pilot get tired, etc, then the craft will autogyro in. That is the spinning blades will allow the pilot down much easier.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
it will indeed spin around like mad if the little rotor existant. I already stated that I'm not into helicopters, but isn't it quite obvious that a helicopter can't fly if most of the energy is used for spinning the cockpit? Even if it would work it would be quite unlikely that the pilot could take it.
I don't read replies by ACs.
The technique usually used for this I understand is conformal mapping. There's a little spiel and animation about it here. The calculation itself isn't really that fun, at least from what I remember from my homework assignments, but its pretty cool that it can be done systematically for all these airfoils.
If you are into the details, from the the Riemann theorem quoted in the wikipedia link, any simply connected subset of the complex plane can be mapped onto a disk, and since it's easy to conformally map from a disk to the complex plane minus that disk - like in the figure on the second linked page - then once you know that first mapping for whatever shape your airfoil is (the hard part) you can figure out all the fluid flows around that shape. Of course, this entire technique only works for infinitely long airfoils, since the complex plane just represents a cross-section. If you dislike math and want the actual figure you can just stick it into an air-tunnel and skip the calculation. But you get the idea.
Now that's what I call thinking outside the box!
To the AC that also responded: Just capture the smoke and ash with a filter, so it stays onboard.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Not sure why you think this. During an autorotation in a helicopter or an autogyro, airflow is upward through the rotor. Even during the flare phase, airflow is upward, and thus ground effect does not apply. During the landing phase (hovering autorotation) the airflow is briefly downward, but I doubt that ground effect has much effect - this phase only lasts 2-5 seconds. I've never seen any studies, but I doubt you get much of a vortex going in that amount of time. Besides which - you usually have enough forward airspeed to be in translational lift, even at touchdown.
Experience: helicopter CFI/CFII for the last 25 years...
Check out my website sometime if you are interested in helicopters. www.copters.com.
Paul