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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
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.
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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
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
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.
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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?
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Maybe the wing has no control surfaces. It could use control blending on the elevators and canards.
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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.
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...
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.
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?
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It wouldn't have any control surfaces, nor would it need any.
Just like in normal rotary flight, you simply change the pitch of the rotor blade. The entire wing is an aileron, not any small portion.
The entire layout change consists of ... rotating the receeding rotor 180 degrees (if they even bother to do that) so that its shape is the most aerodynamic. You could just leave it and compensate for the additional drag and lower lift using other control surfaces if you wanted to reduce complexity and remove the ability to rotate a rotor blade 180 degrees on its hub.
From a control perspective, theres no reason to modify the rotor head if you don't do that, cyclic inputs will work exactly as expected in roll, yaw and pitch would need alternate controls not on the rotor as the rotor is no longer in a position to apply torque to pitch or yaw the craft.
And for reference, my R/C helicopter has a rotor head far more complex than anything these guys are working on unless you count the complexity of putting a radar dome on top of the rest of that mess as the military does. Rotor heads aren't complex really, just precise.
The control style of the aircraft wouldn't change either, though heli pilots tend to 'pilot' more than fixed wing pilots so it wound't be something that you could just step into and fly unless you were made aware of the transition phase issues.
The V-22's problems were media and congress. If you think the V-22 shouldn't be flying you have no idea how incredibly hard to control the stealth aircraft are. A v-22 pilot actually flies his aircraft, no F-22, F-35, F-117, or B2 bomber would make it very far past the end of a runway if it wasn't for the computer that ACTUALLY flies the aircraft. The pilot just points the thing in a direction and the computer makes it happen. The V-22 has no where near that sort of fly-by-wire system. The V-22 as it was tested required the pilot to actually be in control of the aircraft, not just pointing it in a direction and letting the computer do the work.
Spend 1/3rd as much on avionics for the Osprey as was spent on any one of the stealth fighters or bomber electronics and you'd never hear of another Osprey mishap. (well, you won't anyway since they aren't flying) It could have easily been made as flyable as it wasn't even completely devoid of static stability like all the Stealth aircraft are.
I'm not sure what you're going on about with the completely changing the layout (geometry is the word you're looking for btw) of the rotors in flight. You do realize that you can already do that in even the most basic of rotor heads, right? (Short of rotating one blade 180 degrees by itself), Its trivial to change any one blade without effecting the others. No one does that because theres no reason to, but the added 'complexity' isn't there.
Helicopters are not ridiculously complex machines. They are more complex than an fixed wing aircraft in some ways, others not so much.
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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.
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If you think the V-22 shouldn't be flying you have no idea how incredibly hard to control the stealth aircraft are. A v-22 pilot actually flies his aircraft, no F-22, F-35, F-117, or B2 bomber would make it very far past the end of a runway if it wasn't for the computer that ACTUALLY flies the aircraft. The pilot just points the thing in a direction and the computer makes it happen. The V-22 has no where near that sort of fly-by-wire system. The V-22 as it was tested required the pilot to actually be in control of the aircraft, not just pointing it in a direction and letting the computer do the work.
It sounds like you haven't heard anything about the V-22 in a couple decades. The V-22 is extremely high-tech. It has a glass cockpit and triple-redundant fly-by-wire-system and is currently in Operational status and flying all the time. I watched a pair of them doing fast-roping exercises a few days ago.