Westland Aircraft Limited

Geoffrey Malcolm Byham

Frederick John Perry

Martin Vincent Lowson

David Leonard Hawkings

Ronald V Smith

A helicopter including a power absorber arranged to selectively absorb power from a sustaining rotor system during deceleration. In an illustrated embodiment for a helicopter having a single sustaining rotor, the power absorber comprises a tail rotor assembly having two tail rotors located one on each side of a tail cone, and a control operative to adjust the pitch setting of the tail rotors to provide lateral thrust forces in opposed directions with a net lateral thrust force in one direction in order to maintain a desired heading during deceleration.

Helicopters

A helicopter rotor blade includes a rearwardly swept tip portion having a leading edge of aerofoil profile located forward of the leading edge of a central portion of the blade, and blended with a sharp tip edge of higher sweep magnitude than the leading edge and extending rearwardly to an extreme tip of the blade. A rearwardly swept trailing edge extends from a junction with the trailing edge of the central portion to the extreme tip so that the tip portion has a chord dimension greater than that of the central portion of the blade. In operation, the rotor blade utilizes a stable vortex dominated flow field created over the tip portion to provide operational advantages in respect of both a retreating and an advancing blade.

Growing community of inventors

Yeovil, United Kingdom

Geoffrey Malcolm Byham