Design And Study Of Inflatable Rotor Of One-man Flight Vehicle

Rotor is the main component of gyroplane and/or helicopter for lift. Because of size ofrotor blades, the rotor blades will take up too much ground space when it is parked ortransported. The space occupied would be largely reduced, if the rotor blades are folded.However, rotor-blade folding technologies now widely used have a lot of problems. Structurecomplexity, wear, and maintenance problem, all influence the feasibility of the folding rotorblade. To solve these problems，this paper investigates the possibility of inflatable rotor bladeand its application on one-man flight vehicle. The main works of this paper are：（1）The inflatable rotor blade is designed. The main parameters and the aerodynamicshape of an inflatable rotor blade are studied.3D model of inflatable blade is constructedaccording to theory of inflatable structure.（2）The power needed for the inflatable rotor blade is calculated based on blade elementtheory. The aerodynamic characteristics of the inflatable blade and the conventional rigidrotor blade are compared by CFD simulation.（3）The material for the inflatable blades is selected according blades’ deflection bynonlinear static finite element models. Stiffness of the inflatable blades is studied underdifferent internal pressures.（4） Vibration characteristics of the inflated blade are analyzed and the naturalfrequencies and the first10order modal shapes are obtained. Influence of internal pressureson the modal of the inflatable blade is investigated. The result shows that the internal pressurehas little effect on the first10modals.