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Hybrid RotorWing Design Transitions From Fixed To Rotary Wing Mid-Flight
cylonlover writes "Attempts to combine the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capabilities of a helicopter with the high-speed flight and long range capabilities of a fixed-wing aircraft have been tackled in a number of different ways – from tiltrotor designs, such as the V-280 Valor and Project Zero, to fixed rotor aircraft that transition from vertical to horizontal flight, such as the SkyTote and Flexrotor. Australian company StopRotor Technology has taken a different approach with its Hybrid RotorWing design concept which features a main rotor that switches from fixed rotor to fixed wing in mid air."
Is this like the Harrier, where the motor switches from vertical to horizontal?
All that tape, cables and patchwork. It looks like a real garage project. :3
Looks like one of those UFO rods.
Someone has been watching it.
"Convert to da choppa!" - Arnold Schwarzenegger
Though at least these guys seem to have worked out how to stop the thing from sinking like a stone during rotor transition though, which is a welcome feature.
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This is not a new concept. Autogyros are very old tech.
You will get no applause from me.
It's interesting engineering and all, but I was kind of hoping that when someone finally built a helicopter that transformed into an airplane, it'd look cooler. This thing looks like a flying cigar with toothpicks coming out of it. As it is I think I'd rather fly in that autogiro made of crates, whose rotor was Pippi Longstocking spinning a pair of brooms, than this thing.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Everything that's old is new again.
In other news, Mattel to sue StopRotor for copying its various GI Joe and Cobra toys from the 80s
This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. The forces on a set of rotor blades are phenomenal, and the additional hardware required to make them a controllable item would have to be slung around with the blade. A rotor hub is already an obscenely complicated, high-tolerance device even without active components adding weight. There have been attempts to make dynamic rotors, and the results have been hard-won, with the only intention being expanding the operational range of the craft. Trying to completely change the layout mid-flight is crazy, not to mention the brown-trousers experience of piloting such a thing. The V-22 had enough problems due to pilot error; with this I shudder to think. As has been stated previously, the only operational demonstrator is fundamentally an autogyro, and even a working model would do very little to suggest that this could be meaningfully scaled up.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-72
ATM this is effectively just a large R/C model, we'll have to see how it scales and with what useful cargo load. All sorts of interesting design work on R/C models because of the power/weight that is possible at this scale.
The working prototype is a helicopter with an added prop on the front.
This is not a new concept. Autogyros are very old tech.
No, it's not. First, it's not an autogyro, although it apparently can operate in autogyro mode. But, more important, once it has forward motion, the rotor stops rotating and becomes a wing.
check some of the images here http://www.gizmag.com/hybrid-rotorwing-stop-rotor/27092/pictures
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is a two blade helicopter that has a jet engine in the back. When the jet engine fires, the two blade lock into position perpendicular to the jet engine, and act as a wing.
Everything else they talk about are the complex things that need to be done to make it work.
Also note, they made it in small drone sized scale. That might be to save money, or it might be that we don't have the technology to scale it up to human sized (material strengths might not be up to the task).
Yep, I remember this too. I even found the site of someone who claims to have created it. But you and he are off by 10 years - it was July 1987.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Are you kidding me?
I wasn't aware that Stephen Hawking was doing narration for videos.
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How do you define "fixed rotor"? Is there such a thing as an unfixed rotor in comparison?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They finally got the V22 Osprey to work?
Will you be the first one to try flying one of these things? Oh no, don't look at me. No way.
Well, looks like Bell trying make new product get another military contract. I remember them selling their civilian rights to their european partners. V-22 Osprey been having troubles since the 80s with various problems with the mechanical break downs to pilots having problems.
V-280 Valor almost looks like a Blackhawk helicoptor with V-22's Rotorary setup. CGI promotion films makes look bit too think and smaller than the Osprey.
Seems there will have to be a few design compromises
The rotors need a drive mechanism. This is dead weight when in level flight.
The rotors will need to be symmetrical, making them less efficient as wings and as rotors.
The whole system is more complex than either a plane or a helicopter. Makes building and maintaining it more expensive.
What are the advantages over a vectored thrust approach?
I'm glad they're working on something and especially glad that they are starting with hobbyists because they've got a reasonable chance of commercial success there, and hopefully it will lead to some eureka moment that can effectively be transferred into full-scale passenger flight.
That said, I would NOT want to be a passenger in that thing! Even the computer model gets bounced around a hell of a lot during transition and that, I'd imagine, is modeled in calm weather. Not to mention, a lot of free-fall is involved. A lot of passengers have a hard enough time stomaching CTOL. These transitions should come with a warning that says "For roller coaster enthusiasts, only."
They want their concepts back. M.A.S.K. series V.E.N.O.M. Switchblade: http://www.albertpenello.com/mask/switchblade.html But who needs fixed wings when you've got Airwolf, a Mach 1+ Chopper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airwolf#The_Airwolf_helicopter
Sikorsky unofficially holds the record on fastest helicopter (the Sikorsky X2) which while not stopping the rotors, use them to generate a little lift for high-speed flight. It too uses a pusher prop and wings...
Glad I'm not the only one who remembered it.
See the Sikorsky "X-Wing" modification of the S-72 RSRA.
What will be news is when someone builds something that goes beyond "concept" to "flyable aircraft that demonstrates in-flight transition between rotary- and fixed-wing flight.) But a stopped rotor concept is not much in the way of news.
This is very interesting, but it seems quite complicated. I wonder how many points of failure there are that transition it to brick mode.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
So this is basically trying to create in reality the aircraft from "The 6th Day", where they act as a helicopter part of the time, but can convert to a "sleek" jet for long range flight. Sounds neat, but there have to be some serious issues with weight & efficiency. Judging from the prototype images they have a long way to go.
One of the videos shows the transitions between rotary and fixed phases, during which the vehicle is essentially in free-fall. How long does it have to stay in transition, spinning up/down the wing/blades before it can complete the transition? You can definitely rule passenger flight out, and will ikely be less reliable than the V-22 by an order of magnitude - and that's saying something.
Isn't this what Airwolf did when it went supersonic?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This guys built a much prettier chopper-airplane hybrid vehicle.
They assembled it in my hometown and I got to watch it fly in person.
Personally I like my concept better......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep4nQAoL9FM
Maybe not the best sci-fi movie (more entertaining than anything, given it's a Schwarzenegger action flick), but definitely had some interesting ideas. The concept helicopter in the movie is pretty much an idealized form of what the real-life experimental helicopter being developed does in its transition.
Scene from the movie featuring the hybrid rotorwing helicopters.
It seems to me that the transition between rotary and fixed wing modes is a bit "exciting". Can't imagine that you'll get pilots prepared to try it, let alone passengers. Maybe it'll be useful for drones, if anybody needs a VTOL drone with a long-range cruise mode.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Yes, we've been here before. The one I remembered was the four-bladed "X-wing" (no relation) concept from the 70s/80s. Same challenges. Sikorsky were building a prototype at one point, but (according to Wikipedia, at least) the program was canned before the prototype got a chance to fly. The approach on that occasion was to use blown-air shaping on the rotors to get the desired effective lift surface shapes.
I must admit, the idea in this case, that the way to transition between modes is to plunge the airframe into a fall, doesn't exactly sound like they've found an ideal solution yet.