Active vibration control for the Kazan Ansat

Abstract

This paper presents a high-level overview of the implementation and the results of LORD's OMNI Active Vibration Control System (AVCS) on Russian Helicopter's Ansat helicopter platform as well as a brief description of principles of the technology. The AVCS is designed so that it can be easily adapted to both existing production aircraft and new aircraft development to actively reduce in-flight vibration levels. Vibration reduction allows for increased crew comfort, reduced equipment fatigue and in certain cases even an increased flight envelope at minimal installation weight versus performance compared to other vibration reduction technologies. The technology is architected with a high degree of modularity to allow it to be adapted to a wide variety of aircraft and customer use-cases. The primary goal on the Ansat was to configure the AVCS to reduce vibration levels at the VIP seats in the aft cabin although cockpit vibration levels were also to be considered. LORD engineers worked with the Russian Helicopters team at the Kazan, Russia facility to integrate and tune the system through simulation and flight test, which resulted in reductions in vibration levels at the VIP seats of up to 84% depending on flight condition. Ultimately, these efforts resulted in two production configurations, which first appeared on a production Ansat in February 2018, making it the first Russian helicopter with LORD's Active Vibration Control technology.