Design study, prototyping and performance evaluation for on-board blade pitch control system of rotorcraft considering high g environment

Abstract

The conventional blade pitch control of rotorcraft is performed by a swashplate mechanism driven by the actuators placed on a non-rotating frame. One of the drawbacks of the swashplate mechanism is the high life cycle cost deriving from its mechanical complexity. In order to cope with this problem, an active trailing edge flap based system is proposed and design studied considering an operation in the high centrifugal force acting environment. The proposed drive mechanism consists of a piezoelectric actuator, an amplifying mechanism and a linear/rotary movement converter to satisfy the design target which requires the trailing edge flap to deflect 6deg amplitude at 22Hz with 1,000G centrifugal force. A prototype of the drive mechanism is developed and statically evaluated by a bench test, then dynamically done by a spin test. Both tests demonstrate the enough operability of the developed drive mechanism on the high centrifugal force condition.