PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Ditching a helicopter: (incl pictures)
View Single Post
Old 18th Nov 2001, 22:58
  #56 (permalink)  
heedm
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: AB, Canada
Posts: 420
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Post

You're likely to start an argument just by mentioning gyroscopic precession. For the record, GP is an effect observed on a rotating body whose geometry has constraints. Some rotors fit in those constraints, others don't. The phenomenon that causes the GP effect is the conservation of angular momentum. That applies to anything that spins, no matter at what speed it spins.

When you apply a force to a blade, it causes the blade to rotate about it's flapping axis. If the blade is already rotating about a vertical axis, then the resultant spinning is a sum of the two.

When the rotors are up to speed and only relatively small forces are imparted to the blade, the result is predictable: gyroscopic precession (or something close).

When the rotors are not up to speed and you have something that imparts a relatively large force on the blade, all the spinning motions are conserved but it may not appear to be like gyroscopic precession.

Consider the rotor just started moving and a gust of wind hits the helicopter causing the forward moving blade at 3 o'clock to rise. The immediate result of the two spins is that the blade will want to spin in a disk that is almost vertical but with the top of the disk leaning slightly forward. The forward leaning is due to the very slow rotor speed. If the blade was allowed to spin 360 degrees in this disk, the maximum displacement would be at the 12 o'clock position, where the tilted disk is highest. This is the result that you expect from the GP explanation. With the rotor stopped, the immediate result of the gust would be for it to spin in a vertical disk.

Notice I mentioned only the sum of the two spins. In helicopters with elastomeric bearings, control geometries that respond to blade position, etc. other forces are imparted on the blades, which may cause yet another spin to occur, which can change the "gamma" to something other than 90 degrees. This doesn't contradict the angular momentum argument, but it gives much more to talk about. It does contradict the gyroscopic precession argument, but only because the rotor doesn't fit within the constraints of what defines a gyroscope anymore.

If you accept gyroscopic precession as a reasonable explanation as to why rotors behave the way they do, then gyroscopic precession occurs at all rotor speeds. Since the blades are normally mechanically restricted on the flapping axis, the immediate result of blade movement doesn't appear to be due to gyroscopic precession.

If you don't accept GP as a reasonable explanation, it doesn't matter. The blade behaves the same way no matter what words you apply to the physics. If you talk about rotational dynamics instead, you would be much more accurate, but very few people would understand you.

For those that want a straight answer.

The faster the rotor is moving, you'll see the maximum displacement of the blade further forward in the rotor's direction of spin.


Matthew.
heedm is offline