how does this thing gain lift in forward flight it has no wings. you have to have lift to over come gravity. once it rotates the rotor blades no longer create lift they pull it forward.
I wrote: “The craft takes off vertically, flies nose-high as it develops horizontal flight speed, and gradually noses over into horizontal flight.” In that text, at least, I am not speaking of abrupt direction changes. If you search on "Helicopter barrel rolls" you can see some amazing stuff. One should expect that tiltplanes will be more maneuverable than helicopters because the hub diameter of tiltplanes are quite large - permitting large moments to easily be applied to tiltplane rotors.
THE IDEA IS CERTAINLY POSSIBLE, BUT I THINK YOUR CLAIMS OF INSTANT CORRECTION, AND DIRECTIONAL CHANGE TO BE OVER SIMPLIFIED, DUE TO THE REQUIREMENTS IT TAKES A TWIN ROTOR DESIGN LIKE THIS, TO ACTUALLY PERFORM SUCH SENSITIVE
I am a retired engineer. I graduated from Webb Institute, on a full scholarship as are all Webb students, in 1964. I worked professionally as an engineer until 2 years ago when I retired. I paid Ray Prouty, a well know aeronautical engineering consultant, to review and analyze the tiltplane concept and I have programs in BASIC which he wrote which can be used to analyze the craft's performance.
The two-passenger craft I show is unrealistic for various reasons, but robotic craft should be fine.
That is a good question. I am confident that, when cruising, if it puts its nose down a bit it can glide with its rotors turning on a down slope with no power. When hovering at a reasonable altitude it should be able, when settling, to use its altitude to spin its rotors and, as it approaches the ground, convert the energy of the rotating rotors to a lift impulse to cushion the landing, as can a helicopter. Like helicopters tiltplanes will need to avoid the dangerous speed/height regions.
I am not close to manufacturing units; I haven't yet made any wind tunnel test models. But I do have computer programs which seem to be very good and which I can use to analyze the craft's performance in hover, transition, and cruise. I am hoping to receive government funding to build models and run wind tunnel tests at a reputable university.
I expect that the cost of tiltplanes will be comparable to the cost of high performance helicopters with similar takeoff weights - which are not cheap.
One the manufacturing process begins what price point can you deliver each unit? How large are your current prototypes? Model size I am presuming? What speed have you attained?
Note that when hovering, transitioning, and flying the rotor blades see relatively high air speeds, so large rotor blade areas are not needed to give needed lift.
The pitch angle of each of the rotor blades is independently controlled by fast servos, so the control system can "dial in" the amount of lift needed by each rotor blade in each of its flight modes, consistent with other craft parameters.
Large rotor blades are not needed; the lift goes with the square of the airspeed which is high.
In horizontal flight cyclic the rotors are making long slow spirals through the air. Cyclic pitch control, which is implemented in both rotors, can create up-down and left-right forces in each rotor, forces perpendicular to the current flight direction.
The rotor blades produce all the lift needed in all the flight modes. One could say that the rotor blades serve as both propellers and wings.
There was a toy - a stick with propellers at each end & a rubber band motor in between. It flew well.
While my credentials for aerospace work are not strong, I paid Ray Prouty, who is well known and greatly respected in the helicopter world, to analyze this concept, and he did.
Both rotors implement cyclic and collective pitch. When cruising with the axis of the craft horizontal (zero AoA) the rotor blades are capable of producing both lift and thrust.
Recently I have not been espousing reducing the "wetted area" in cruise by effectively reducing the rotor blade area. It doesn't help much.
Looks like Industrial Design work without real (Aerospace) Engineering knowledge.
Without wings you would have to fly at 15-20 degrees AoA to keep enough lift/vertical thrust which creates huge drag over the tubular fuselage, and the sliding rotor blades are an implausible idea for such high rotor disk loading.
If you are referring to the German craft mentioned below, well it is definitely very interesting. Search on "Heinkel Lerche". But that aircraft depended on an annular ring-wing for in-flight lift and my design obtains in-flight lift from its rotor blades. As far as not being new, I agree. An old toy consisted of a stick with propellers at the each end a rubber band motor.
If you are referring to the German craft mentioned below, well it is definitely very interesting. Search on "Heinkel Lerche". But that aircraft depended on an annular ring-wing for in-flight lift and my design obtains in-flight lift from its rotor blades. As far as not being new, I agree. An old toy consisted of a stick with propellers at the each end a rubber band motor.
I received an email from pkt42 saying that he thought that the tiltplane concept was somewhat similar to the Heinkel Lerche, an early German concept VTOL fighter that used a wrap-around wing with propellers inside. In that case lift in flight was produced by the wrap-around wing, but in the tiltplane case, lift in all modes is produced only by the rotor blades. But both craft do take off vertically, cruise horizontally, and land again vertically.
Individual rotor blades produce lift when they have an angle of attack relative to the approaching air. If the rotor blades were not turning but stopped with the blades oriented horizontally and vertically, then the horizontal rotor blades could be given an angle of attack and would produce lift. When the rotors turn lift will be produced by the horizontal components of the rotor blades.
Still not seeing how it's developing significant lift during horizontal flight. Tilt the disk 5 degrees. Sure there's some lift, but enough? I doubt it. And the fuselage shape is going to make for a VERY inefficient lifting body by itself... In short, I see lift, but damned little of it.
Several years ago, before I applied for a patent, I had an international patent search done and nothing very close turned up. Of course, not every flying craft has been, or is being, patented. I did see a sketch of a craft very much like mine in a paper from about 40 years ago showing an overview of possible aircraft concepts, but as far as anyone could tell, the concept was never developed beyond that sketch. I would be very interested in seeing this "German copy" that you are talking about.
@jlawren3 The original German concept here is the Heinkel Lerche, a concept VTOL fighter with twin contra-rotating propellers and an annular wing developed in 1944. The Nazis never got any further than concept and basic aerodynamics before the war ended, but the Lerche is very similar to your concept, so you may have to check your patent claims with this prior art. Good luck with developing on this, it looks very promising. You could try a scale RC models as a first proof of concept.
I think that it is a happy circumstance that a very efficient and practical aircraft concept has somehow been overlooked. This approach is not at all like approaches which I know of which were tried in the sixties; this approach uses the rotor blades for propulsion as well as for wings to provide lift. The surface area of the rotor blades can be less than the area of the wings and control surfaces of conventional aircraft, making it possible for tiltplanes to have a better cruise efficiency.
What a useless project...The US had tiltplanes back in the fities and sixties...If they were any good they would be common place by now, but they are not. Unlike this one, they had conventional wings so did'nt have to rely on the inefficient "helicopter" like method to keep it in the air. On the upside, I really like the shape of the fuselage, but the design would be better used on something else, more practical.
If the fuselage of the craft is horizontal, and it is advancing horizontally through the air, and the two 4-bladed rotors have no pitch, then no lift is produced. If the craft pitches nose up 5 degrees and two blades on each rotor are horizontal, then lift is produced on the horizontal rotor blades because they are like wings with a 5 degree angle of attack. If the craft fuselage is made horizontal and the horizontal rotor blades are pitched up 5 degrees, lift is also produced. Agreed?
I hope your patent is better worded than your attempt at explaining this. In aerodynamics we talk about angle of incidence and relative airflow. What is straight with the flow, what is 5 degrees pitch up? your craft starts out at 90 degrees nose up. I see no scientific explanation.
At the end of the day a propeller system can only produce lift normal to its disk and therefore your craft in a horizontal position would have to be a satellite to stay airborne ....
This craft could not achieve true horizontal flight. A propeller like that of a plane does not produce lift in the up direction. This is just a glorified couter-rotating helicopter. Throw some folding wings or something on there for horizontal flight and your props will provide thrust.
Try flying a helicopter with the rotor disk perpendicular to the ground and then let me know haha.
See my thought experiment below with which I attempt top take the reader by steps to a point where one can imagine getting lift out of the rotors in horizontal flight. Do you agree that if the rotor was stopped and the rotor blades were straight with the flow that no lift would be produced? Then do you agree that if the craft were pitched nose up 5 degrees, lift would be produced? Continue the reasoning below.
Incidentally, a toy was made with a propeller at each end & a rubber band drive...
If rotation were stopped and the blades were made straight to the flow, then there would be no lift. Now, if the whole craft were tilted to the flow, say 5 degrees, then there would be lift. Now if the blades were made to rotate slowly, the lift would continue, right? If the craft pitch angle were set to 0 degrees and the blades were are given an up pitch when they are horizontal, similar to what they were doing when the craft was 5 degrees nose high, there would still be lift. Does this help?
I think that lots of people may find this intriguing but are probably unconvinced that an aircraft can fly horizontally as I show. I am in the process of designing and building a flying model. I will use model helicopter rotor blades and electric motors.
I plan to make this model as simple as possible and still be able to demonstrate all the flight modes. I think that I can make the rotor blades fixed-pitch and control the craft by other means. Two separate motors would drive the 2 rotors.
ccryder: Please review your response. Is the "safer and more efficient design" the one that was retired after flight testing?
As far as I know the design I show is a new idea. A world-wide patent search did not turn up anything like it. Please let me know what you can find to support your statement.
In hovering it is not too different from a helicopter. There is nothing I see in the design which will give it more trouble than a helicopter in dealing with near ground turbulence. (Out of space)
Sorry...not a new idea. A safer and more efficient design based upon the counter-rotating rotary wing concept was developed decades ago. After flight testing, the concept was retired. The long list of reasons includes such things as poor weight to lift ratio, poor in-flight fuel economy, virtually no cargo carrying capabilities, inability to deal with near ground turbulence, etc.
You'd have to wait for the rotors to stop before being able to get out of this thing and surely if it were to lose power during horizontal flight, it would drop like a stone?
Yes, you would have to wait for the rotors to stop turning.
If power is lost in normal cruising flight, then the craft can glide to a suitable landing site and land site. It can land in a great many places.
Power loss when taking off and less than 20 feet up or power loss at an altitude of more than, say, 200 feet should not be problems. But in the 20 to 200 feet climb-out range things can get dicey. A ballistic parachute has been suggested for this range.
@jlawren3 Aloha, how®you? We'd like to connect with Phantom Mouse to create simulation work for LEO - tinyurl [dot] com/LEO-LowEarthOrbit so we can move into 'life-size' prototype phase. Please & thanks for your assistance. We love your design too~! Thanks again. teamLEOnardo.
how does this thing gain lift in forward flight it has no wings. you have to have lift to over come gravity. once it rotates the rotor blades no longer create lift they pull it forward.
jakemrcool 1 month ago
Did you know that at some airshows helicopters do barrel rolls? Tiltplanes will easily be as maneuverable as most helicopters.
Where did I claim instant direction changes for tiltplanes? I am not aware that I ever claimed that.
I do claim that tiltplanes can easily have cruising speeds which are two times or even three times the cruising speed of most helicopters.
jlawren3 3 months ago
I wrote: “The craft takes off vertically, flies nose-high as it develops horizontal flight speed, and gradually noses over into horizontal flight.” In that text, at least, I am not speaking of abrupt direction changes. If you search on "Helicopter barrel rolls" you can see some amazing stuff. One should expect that tiltplanes will be more maneuverable than helicopters because the hub diameter of tiltplanes are quite large - permitting large moments to easily be applied to tiltplane rotors.
jlawren3 3 months ago
THE IDEA IS CERTAINLY POSSIBLE, BUT I THINK YOUR CLAIMS OF INSTANT CORRECTION, AND DIRECTIONAL CHANGE TO BE OVER SIMPLIFIED, DUE TO THE REQUIREMENTS IT TAKES A TWIN ROTOR DESIGN LIKE THIS, TO ACTUALLY PERFORM SUCH SENSITIVE
9493760 3 months ago
I am a retired engineer. I graduated from Webb Institute, on a full scholarship as are all Webb students, in 1964. I worked professionally as an engineer until 2 years ago when I retired. I paid Ray Prouty, a well know aeronautical engineering consultant, to review and analyze the tiltplane concept and I have programs in BASIC which he wrote which can be used to analyze the craft's performance.
The two-passenger craft I show is unrealistic for various reasons, but robotic craft should be fine.
jlawren3 4 months ago
Good graphics, but bad idea !
You have no idea that you speak about,
not in aerodynamics aspects,
nor in mechanical.
TIgor79 4 months ago
That is a good question. I am confident that, when cruising, if it puts its nose down a bit it can glide with its rotors turning on a down slope with no power. When hovering at a reasonable altitude it should be able, when settling, to use its altitude to spin its rotors and, as it approaches the ground, convert the energy of the rotating rotors to a lift impulse to cushion the landing, as can a helicopter. Like helicopters tiltplanes will need to avoid the dangerous speed/height regions.
jlawren3 4 months ago
What kind of failure modes would you have in case of an emergency like loss of power, can it auto rotate?
elwood173 4 months ago
I am not close to manufacturing units; I haven't yet made any wind tunnel test models. But I do have computer programs which seem to be very good and which I can use to analyze the craft's performance in hover, transition, and cruise. I am hoping to receive government funding to build models and run wind tunnel tests at a reputable university.
I expect that the cost of tiltplanes will be comparable to the cost of high performance helicopters with similar takeoff weights - which are not cheap.
jlawren3 6 months ago
One the manufacturing process begins what price point can you deliver each unit? How large are your current prototypes? Model size I am presuming? What speed have you attained?
LanceWinslow5 7 months ago
Note that when hovering, transitioning, and flying the rotor blades see relatively high air speeds, so large rotor blade areas are not needed to give needed lift.
The pitch angle of each of the rotor blades is independently controlled by fast servos, so the control system can "dial in" the amount of lift needed by each rotor blade in each of its flight modes, consistent with other craft parameters.
Large rotor blades are not needed; the lift goes with the square of the airspeed which is high.
jlawren3 8 months ago
In horizontal flight cyclic the rotors are making long slow spirals through the air. Cyclic pitch control, which is implemented in both rotors, can create up-down and left-right forces in each rotor, forces perpendicular to the current flight direction.
The rotor blades produce all the lift needed in all the flight modes. One could say that the rotor blades serve as both propellers and wings.
There was a toy - a stick with propellers at each end & a rubber band motor in between. It flew well.
jlawren3 8 months ago
How do you steer it on horizontal flight?...
Unless this is a kind of "drag race plane". Straight ahead on the lane. Bad to avoid storms then.
No wings to create lift, no tail to balance, how does he sustains itself?...
Cannibal666Corpse 8 months ago
While my credentials for aerospace work are not strong, I paid Ray Prouty, who is well known and greatly respected in the helicopter world, to analyze this concept, and he did.
Both rotors implement cyclic and collective pitch. When cruising with the axis of the craft horizontal (zero AoA) the rotor blades are capable of producing both lift and thrust.
Recently I have not been espousing reducing the "wetted area" in cruise by effectively reducing the rotor blade area. It doesn't help much.
jlawren3 8 months ago
Looks like Industrial Design work without real (Aerospace) Engineering knowledge.
Without wings you would have to fly at 15-20 degrees AoA to keep enough lift/vertical thrust which creates huge drag over the tubular fuselage, and the sliding rotor blades are an implausible idea for such high rotor disk loading.
hjoore 8 months ago
If you are referring to the German craft mentioned below, well it is definitely very interesting. Search on "Heinkel Lerche". But that aircraft depended on an annular ring-wing for in-flight lift and my design obtains in-flight lift from its rotor blades. As far as not being new, I agree. An old toy consisted of a stick with propellers at the each end a rubber band motor.
jlawren3 9 months ago
If you are referring to the German craft mentioned below, well it is definitely very interesting. Search on "Heinkel Lerche". But that aircraft depended on an annular ring-wing for in-flight lift and my design obtains in-flight lift from its rotor blades. As far as not being new, I agree. An old toy consisted of a stick with propellers at the each end a rubber band motor.
jlawren3 9 months ago
Nothing new here. Germans had this concept in the 40's.
1963geistaffe 9 months ago
I received an email from pkt42 saying that he thought that the tiltplane concept was somewhat similar to the Heinkel Lerche, an early German concept VTOL fighter that used a wrap-around wing with propellers inside. In that case lift in flight was produced by the wrap-around wing, but in the tiltplane case, lift in all modes is produced only by the rotor blades. But both craft do take off vertically, cruise horizontally, and land again vertically.
jlawren3 9 months ago
Individual rotor blades produce lift when they have an angle of attack relative to the approaching air. If the rotor blades were not turning but stopped with the blades oriented horizontally and vertically, then the horizontal rotor blades could be given an angle of attack and would produce lift. When the rotors turn lift will be produced by the horizontal components of the rotor blades.
jlawren3 1 year ago
Still not seeing how it's developing significant lift during horizontal flight. Tilt the disk 5 degrees. Sure there's some lift, but enough? I doubt it. And the fuselage shape is going to make for a VERY inefficient lifting body by itself... In short, I see lift, but damned little of it.
Inigo93 1 year ago
Several years ago, before I applied for a patent, I had an international patent search done and nothing very close turned up. Of course, not every flying craft has been, or is being, patented. I did see a sketch of a craft very much like mine in a paper from about 40 years ago showing an overview of possible aircraft concepts, but as far as anyone could tell, the concept was never developed beyond that sketch. I would be very interested in seeing this "German copy" that you are talking about.
jlawren3 1 year ago
@jlawren3 The original German concept here is the Heinkel Lerche, a concept VTOL fighter with twin contra-rotating propellers and an annular wing developed in 1944. The Nazis never got any further than concept and basic aerodynamics before the war ended, but the Lerche is very similar to your concept, so you may have to check your patent claims with this prior art. Good luck with developing on this, it looks very promising. You could try a scale RC models as a first proof of concept.
pkt42 10 months ago
I think that it is a happy circumstance that a very efficient and practical aircraft concept has somehow been overlooked. This approach is not at all like approaches which I know of which were tried in the sixties; this approach uses the rotor blades for propulsion as well as for wings to provide lift. The surface area of the rotor blades can be less than the area of the wings and control surfaces of conventional aircraft, making it possible for tiltplanes to have a better cruise efficiency.
jlawren3 1 year ago
What a useless project...The US had tiltplanes back in the fities and sixties...If they were any good they would be common place by now, but they are not. Unlike this one, they had conventional wings so did'nt have to rely on the inefficient "helicopter" like method to keep it in the air. On the upside, I really like the shape of the fuselage, but the design would be better used on something else, more practical.
sigmasd10 1 year ago
If the fuselage of the craft is horizontal, and it is advancing horizontally through the air, and the two 4-bladed rotors have no pitch, then no lift is produced. If the craft pitches nose up 5 degrees and two blades on each rotor are horizontal, then lift is produced on the horizontal rotor blades because they are like wings with a 5 degree angle of attack. If the craft fuselage is made horizontal and the horizontal rotor blades are pitched up 5 degrees, lift is also produced. Agreed?
jlawren3 1 year ago
I hope your patent is better worded than your attempt at explaining this. In aerodynamics we talk about angle of incidence and relative airflow. What is straight with the flow, what is 5 degrees pitch up? your craft starts out at 90 degrees nose up. I see no scientific explanation.
At the end of the day a propeller system can only produce lift normal to its disk and therefore your craft in a horizontal position would have to be a satellite to stay airborne ....
pierrehery 1 year ago
This craft could not achieve true horizontal flight. A propeller like that of a plane does not produce lift in the up direction. This is just a glorified couter-rotating helicopter. Throw some folding wings or something on there for horizontal flight and your props will provide thrust.
Try flying a helicopter with the rotor disk perpendicular to the ground and then let me know haha.
pierrehery 1 year ago
See my thought experiment below with which I attempt top take the reader by steps to a point where one can imagine getting lift out of the rotors in horizontal flight. Do you agree that if the rotor was stopped and the rotor blades were straight with the flow that no lift would be produced? Then do you agree that if the craft were pitched nose up 5 degrees, lift would be produced? Continue the reasoning below.
Incidentally, a toy was made with a propeller at each end & a rubber band drive...
jlawren3 1 year ago
There is a major issue here! Where are you getting your lift in horizontal flight?!?!?!?
pierrehery 1 year ago
If rotation were stopped and the blades were made straight to the flow, then there would be no lift. Now, if the whole craft were tilted to the flow, say 5 degrees, then there would be lift. Now if the blades were made to rotate slowly, the lift would continue, right? If the craft pitch angle were set to 0 degrees and the blades were are given an up pitch when they are horizontal, similar to what they were doing when the craft was 5 degrees nose high, there would still be lift. Does this help?
jlawren3 1 year ago
I think that lots of people may find this intriguing but are probably unconvinced that an aircraft can fly horizontally as I show. I am in the process of designing and building a flying model. I will use model helicopter rotor blades and electric motors.
I plan to make this model as simple as possible and still be able to demonstrate all the flight modes. I think that I can make the rotor blades fixed-pitch and control the craft by other means. Two separate motors would drive the 2 rotors.
jlawren3 1 year ago
ccryder: Please review your response. Is the "safer and more efficient design" the one that was retired after flight testing?
As far as I know the design I show is a new idea. A world-wide patent search did not turn up anything like it. Please let me know what you can find to support your statement.
In hovering it is not too different from a helicopter. There is nothing I see in the design which will give it more trouble than a helicopter in dealing with near ground turbulence. (Out of space)
jlawren3 1 year ago
Sorry...not a new idea. A safer and more efficient design based upon the counter-rotating rotary wing concept was developed decades ago. After flight testing, the concept was retired. The long list of reasons includes such things as poor weight to lift ratio, poor in-flight fuel economy, virtually no cargo carrying capabilities, inability to deal with near ground turbulence, etc.
ccryder1149 1 year ago
What is teh height of the tilt plane, nose to tail?
lanier2k5 1 year ago
No chance of ejecting so a parachute is a must!
Erbalite 1 year ago
You'd have to wait for the rotors to stop before being able to get out of this thing and surely if it were to lose power during horizontal flight, it would drop like a stone?
4optics 1 year ago
@4optics
Yes, you would have to wait for the rotors to stop turning.
If power is lost in normal cruising flight, then the craft can glide to a suitable landing site and land site. It can land in a great many places.
Power loss when taking off and less than 20 feet up or power loss at an altitude of more than, say, 200 feet should not be problems. But in the 20 to 200 feet climb-out range things can get dicey. A ballistic parachute has been suggested for this range.
jlawren3
jlawren3 1 year ago
@4optics add a parachute to top nose cone?
Skimmitar88 1 year ago
someone missed their calling.
katekedley 2 years ago
@katekedley
That's kind. I take it that you like this.
Phantom Mouse deserves the credit for the simulation work.
I had the idea years ago but am blessed now to have a patent applied for and to have time to work on this. I retired a few months ago.
jlawren3
jlawren3 1 year ago
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@jlawren3 Aloha, how®you? We'd like to connect with Phantom Mouse to create simulation work for LEO - tinyurl [dot] com/LEO-LowEarthOrbit so we can move into 'life-size' prototype phase. Please & thanks for your assistance. We love your design too~! Thanks again. teamLEOnardo.
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