United States of America As Represented by the Administrator of Nasa

Nicholas Bryan Cramer

Neil Adam Gershenfeld

Kenneth C Cheung

Benjamin Jenett

Nhan Thanh Nguyen

Sean Swei

Juntao Xiong

An anti-phase rotor system for an aircraft may include at least one rotor with at least two rotor blades. The aerodynamic profile of these two blades may be selected to create counteracting blade vortices to break up harmonic reinforcement due to the rotor blade passage. The aerodynamic profile may create a non-planar motion of one or more rotor blade passages, whereby the individual rotor blades are not co-planar during the rotation of said rotor. The rotor system may include a duct, which may include stationary vanes or struts configured in a manner so as to break up harmonic excitation to the rotor. The interior area of the duct at the area of the blade rotation may be designed in a manner so as to create a destructive rotor blade tip vortex interference.

Anti-phase noise suppression rotor technologies

A shape-morphing ultralight structure using materials that dramatically increase the efficiency of load-bearing aerostructures that includes a programmable material system applied as a large-scale, ultralight, and conformable (shape-morphing) aeroelastic structure. The use of a modular, lattice-based, ultralight material results in stiffness and density typical of an elastomer. This, combined with a building block-based manufacturing and configuration strategy, enables the rapid realization of new adaptive structures and mechanisms. The heterogeneous design with programmable anisotropy allows for enhanced elastic and global shape deformation in response to external loading, making it useful for tuned fluid-structure interaction. The present invention demonstrates an example application experiment using two building block types for the primary structure of a 4.27 m wingspan aircraft with spatially programed elastic shape morphing to increase aerodynamic efficiency.

Elastic shape morphing of ultra-light structures by programmable assembly

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Nicholas Bryan Cramer