Development of a Low-Cost Integrated RTM Horizontal Stabilizer that Flies on Bell Helicopter's MAPL

摘要

Future commercial and military rotorcraft programs will rely heavily on finding successful-high performance, low-cost design solutions. To achieve lower life-cycle cost, candidate advanced manufacturing technologies must be proposed and evaluated. Several advanced composite concepts were proposed and evaluated for a commercial horizontal stabilizer application. These approaches were primarily focused on reducing detailed part cost and assembly complexity of the current stabilizer. A one-piece, multi-spar design was selected. The production design had multiple detail subassemblies that were eliminated with the integrated resin transfer molding (RTM) approach.This lightweight, low cost composite stabilizer designed by Bell Helicopter Textron (BHTI) and manufactured by Fiber Innovations of Walpole, MA using braiding and RTM processes recently flew on the BHTI Modular Affordable Product Line (MAPL) demonstrator aircraft. The one-piece, constant section horizontal stabilizer was designed to provide significant cost reduction compared with a conventional composite design by reducing parts count, subassemblies and associated surface preparation, bonding and inspection steps. The RTM composite stabilizer also features simplified attachment to the fuselage, further reducing assembly cost.