MD Helicopters, Inc. (formerly McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems) is an American aerospace manufacturer. It produces light utility helicopters for commercial and military use. The company was a subsidiary of Hughes Aircraft until 1984, when McDonnell Douglas acquired it and renamed it McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems. It later became MD Helicopters in the late 1990s when McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing.
Examples of successful technology transfer activities from the Helicopter Active Control Technology (HACT) program to legacy and future rotorcraft platforms are documented. The U. S. Army’s strategic vision for insertion of technology developed under the HACT program into force modernization programs for legacy aircraft and new aircraft development programs is reviewed. Case studies of successful transfer of regime recognition, carefree maneuvering, and task tailored control law technologies and advanced integrated computer-aided flight control design tools from the HACT program to critical Department of Defense (DoD) programs such as the CH-47F Chinook, V-22 Osprey, AH-64D Apache, and Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) Rotorcraft programs are analyzed to quantify present-day realized and near-term anticipated Return On Investment (ROI) from U. S. government funding of the HACT program. The technical approach for modifying the full authority Fly-By-Wire (FBW) HACT Flight Control System (HFCS) so that it can be implemented generically on aircraft equipped with mechanical flight control systems and limited authority and rate stability augmentation actuators is described. Progress toward meeting the DoD Rotary Wing Vehicle (RWV) Technology Development Approach (TDA) goals and flight control Technology Effort Objectives (TEOs) for aircraft equipped with Partial Authority Flight Control Augmentation (PAFCA) and for sling loads objectives is presented and illustrated through piloted simulation and flight test data.
A finite difference procedure has been developed for the design of airfoil sections for helicopter rotor blades. The procedure is based on the coupled three-dimensional direct solutions to the full potential equation inherent in the rotor flow solver (RFS2) and the two-dimensional inverse solutions to an auxiliary equation, Here, the evolution of the airfoil geometries, at a number of a priori defined radial control stations is driven by the user-prescribed pressure distributions and the flowfield requirements imposed by the RFS2 flow solver. In this respect, the influence of the finite aspect ratio blade, sweep, taper and, more importantly, the tip vortex wake, are reflected in the final airfoil designs. The lifting-line CAMRAD/JA trim code was incorporated into the design procedure to allow for the simulation of the tip vortex wake effects. Results are presented for the redesign of a number of airfoil sections for a generic hovering rotor (with rectangular blades) with and without allowance for the tip vortex wake effects. Aerodynamic performance characteristics of the original blade and the redesigned blade in hover are assessed using the three-dimensional TURNS Navier-Stokes rotor flow solver.
Composite laminate structures offer many advantages compared with their conventional metal counterparts, but defects can be much harder to detect. In this paper, the author describes how neural networks provide the key to a new, intelligent technique for nondestructive testing
Interactive Media for Maintenance in the 21st Century - A Presentation
