Dynamics of VTOL rotor at rolling up

A.L.Bykov

Department of FV Structural Mechanics.

Kazan State Technical University named after A.N.Tupolev

K.Marx St., 10, Kazan, 420111, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia

Starting with the fifties of the last century, the R&D (research and development) companies in a number of countries make numerous attempts to create the high-speed flying vehicles with vertical take-off and landing, the so-called VTOLs (vertical take-off and landing airplanes). The VTOLs are much more complicated in structure as compared with the conventional airplanes; for this reason, the creation of such a vehicles is a challenge.

A team of specialists from the Kazan State Technical University has been deeply involved in the VTOL design. The VTOL structure uses the disk wing-turbine; in helicopter regimes conditions, the blades are extended (for rotor rotation, the wing mounted jet drive is used). In transition to high-speed level flight, the blades are retracted, and the vehicle flies as the ordinary airplane.

The original design of VTOL power plant makes its structure simple in fabrication, light-weight, and relatively cheap. The rotor twisting is carried out in accordance with the scheme, where the kinetic energy of rotation is used to retract the blades inwardly. The main objective of this paper is the examination of VTOL rotor twisting at flight conditions.

In this paper, we consider some problems of VTOL (vertical take-off and landing airplane) rotor twisting in flight. The rotor assembly of the vehicle consists of the disk wing and internal drum rotating about one and the same axis, and also the extended blades connected with the drum by cables. The equations of motion are written for the case when all bodies are absolutely solid and the blades perform the 3-d motion, while the elastically-fixed rotor axis perform the 2-d motion. Also presented are the results of numeric calculations.