SABRE chopper blades to slash fuel burn

摘要

Helicopters are complicated and vibration is inherent in their design. Yet more complexity and the harnessing of that shaking is a key to their improvement. The rotor on a helicopter is where much of the complexity lies and that exposed blob of mechanics on top of the fuselage generates 30% of the drag a helicopter experiences. The blades, meanwhile, have been relatively simple components. Designed originally for stiffness, they have been made of metal or composites, including fibreglass. Blades that are designed to be active, by having moving parts, would seem to only be adding to that devilish complexity but this is where the solutions can be found. "Helicopters [have] had a lot more trouble with vibration because they are just gigantic vibrating systems," said Benjamin King Sutton Woods, an aerospace structures lecturer at the University of Bristol. King Sutton Woods has been the principle investigator for the European Union-funded Shape Adaptive Blades for Rotorcraft Efficiency (SABRE) project which ended in May. Led by the University of Bristol, SABRE developed helicopter blade morphing technologies aimed at reducing fuel burn, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by 5-10%, while also reducing noise emissions.