VERTICAL TAKEOFF AIRPLANE

Provision of vertical takeoff and landing for the airplanes will improve their operational opportunities, as this will lead to the considerable economy of expenses for aerodromes construction and allow these vehicles to takeoff from any area unprepared beforehand.

This known that during hover the use of helicopter rotor is the most effective, however the main difficulty in creating a plane using this unit is the fact that it is impossible to provide high efficiency of helicopter rotor during a horizontal flight.

Nowadays the solution is being successfully developed according to which during helicopter mode the engines with rotors arranged at the wing ends are turned by 90 degree (V-22 "Osprey" and BA609 "Agusta"). A serious shortage of this scheme is the increase of weight and sophistication of airplane structure due to introduction of additional controls and engine turn mechanisms. The flight safety of such vehicles is in question. In addition, the use of rotors in horizontal flight puts the limit for cruise speed of 550 km/h.

At the A.N.Tupolev Kazan state technical university under the leadership of professor V.A.Pavlov a supersonic vertical takeoff airplane with retractable main rotor is created in which generally different scheme of blade retraction is used making the structure lighter and compact, thus more attractive for use (in figures, the flying model for testing the lifting system is presented).

During the transfer to the airplane mode of flight the blades are retracted inside the disc wing.  The retraction takes place in the plane of rotation at the expense of kinetic energy, therefore, there is no need in additional reduction gearboxes, transmissions and power units. For this, geometry of the flying vehicle is not changed, so the danger of transitional modes is sufficiently lowered.

The structure of the lifting system of the given flying vehicle unites the advantages of main rotor with those of disc wing having a wing profile in the cross-section. The round in plan shape gives two benefits: the first one - the stable flight at any angle of attack up to 90 degrees, thus excluding spin even at the lowest speeds; the second one - the excellent mating of the disc with helicopter way of creating a lift.

On the basis of the given scheme in KAI are developed the projects of supersonic rescue-airplane, recoverable spacecraft, high-speed vertical takeoff airplane for domestic freight and passenger traffic.

There are the Patents on Projects topic.

 

 

Authors

V.A. Pavlov       e-mail: pavlov@online.kzn.ru

doctor of technical science, professor. The field of scientific interests: the catastrophe theory and it's application to dynamics of sectional airfoils of flying vehicles; static and in the dynamics of rods during large replacements; study of dynamics of rotor systems with retractable blades; design of vertical takeoff vehicles.

А.L. Bykov

Candidate of technical science, working for degree of doctor. Laureate of All-Russian competition devoted to the 70th birthday of Moscow State Aviation Institute. His scientific research work won the first place in the section "Physical and mathematical efforts" The field of scientific interests: study of dynamics of rotor systems; design of vertical takeoff vehicles.