An aircraft capable of long range high speed (300-400 kts) and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL)/hover will satisfy an ongoing military interest, bridging the gap in helicopter escort and insertion missions by providing survivability, mobility, and responsiveness for troop and cargo insertion.
An aircraft capable of long range high speed (300-400 kts) and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL)/hover will satisfy an ongoing military interest, bridging the gap in helicopter escort and insertion missions by providing survivability, mobility, and responsiveness for troop and cargo insertion. The goal of the DiscRotor Compound Helicopter program is to design and demonstrate the enabling technologies required to develop a new type of compound helicopter capable of high-efficiency hover, high-speed flight, and seamless transition between these flight states. The aircraft will be equipped with an aft-swept wing as well as a mid-fuselage disc with extendable rotor blades, enabling the aircraft to take-off and land like a helicopter. Transition from helicopter flight to full fixed-wing flight is achieved by fully retracting the blades within the disc. A prime technical objective of the DiscRotor concept is to achieve seamless reversible transition between hover and wing borne flight states. Specific objectives of the DiscRotor Compound Helicopter program include: demonstrating the feasibility of retracting the extendable blades into the disc, characterizing the flowfield environment created by a disc-rotor, demonstrating disc-rotor enabling technologies, and designing and wind tunnel testing a retractable rotor demonstrator. The DiscRotor enabling technologies are: variable thrust ducted propfans, extending telescopic rotor blades, counter torque control, and an integrated propulsion system.