PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Gyroscopic precession engineering question
Old 28th Mar 2024, 05:39
  #54 (permalink)  
helispotter
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Australia
Age: 58
Posts: 315
Received 42 Likes on 34 Posts
I have enjoyed reading the commentary (debate) on this topic, even if some of you have seen it discussed to death.

The video of the Bo105 main rotor blade filmed in slow-motion (from a camera mounted above the hub) is worth a look:


A few things to note: The tail boom comes into view each revolution. This is also when the track of the rotor disk is at about its highest point above the line of the horizon so helicopter is undoubtedly in forward flight. Note that maximum angle of blade incidence had been applied much earlier and is already being reduced again by the time the blade passes over the tail boom. There is also not much "flapping" of the blades themselves, rather the whole rotor disk (as apparent from the movement of the hub relative to the horizon) is tilted relative to the horizontal on this hingeless rotor. Shy Torque gave a nice summary in #2 outlining what is happening, also applicable in this Bo105 case.

All the same, given this is a hingeless rotor, it would certainly have some of the characteristics of a gyroscope. So give a Bo105 a solid shove on its skid while it is in a low hover and the helicopter should partly respond like a gyroscope even if rotor aerodynamics may be a more dominant effect.

Last edited by helispotter; 28th Mar 2024 at 09:24.
helispotter is offline