Overview
The rotor system is one of the key elements of a helicopter. It has a huge impact on the technical and economic capability of the product. In recent years, ECD (Eurocopter Deutschland) reached the technological market leadership in this segment. National research projects have made an important contribution to this success.
The INROS project focuses on the Research and Development of new and innovative rotor systems for future helicopter generations. It follows the objective to reduce weight, maintenance and costs; and to increase safety, comfort, environmental sustainability and airspeed. The project focuses on all relevant system components, such as rotor head, rotor blades and steering technologies.
The objectives are meant to achieve by design and construction of an innovative rotor head system for fast and economic flight operations. Further, an improvement of the flap control for a better rotor steering can help to achieve the goals.
The project is divided into 3 work packages:
- WP1: Innovative rotor head systems
- WP2: Innovative rotor blades
- WP3: Innovative rotor steering technology
Funding
Results
The key findings of the different work packages are the following:
- WP1: Research on special rotor head technologies and configurations, which result in a report including concept description, evaluation and assessment.
- WP2: It was possible to explore passive and active measures (e.g. mechatronic components, software,...) to reduce the necessary drive power, vibrations and noise. Further, it was possible to reduce stall and blade instabilities.
- WP3: In this work package, a concept for a decentralized, electronic steering for helicopters was developed. Further, simulations for the steering of single rotor blades were realised. In cooperation with ZFL (“ZF Luftfahrttechnik”) a blade root steering was integrated for tests on a bench.
Findings of the study are published by a final report (German only), which is available online via the Technical Information Library (TIB) of the Hannover University: http://edok01.tib.uni-hannover.de/edoks/e01fb11/680050140.pdf