The Experimental Helicopter With Overlapping Rotor Blades
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- čas přidán 17. 12. 2023
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This was actually one of the helicopters that ultimately led to the development of the ch-47 Chinook
Uh, no it wasn't. Not even close.
Frank Piaseki jumped right from conventional main/tail rotor to tandem.
Kaman is the only manufacturer out there with syncropter designs like this.
The Chinook came out in 1962, a direct descendant of the Model 107. The K-MAX first flight was 1991.
Take it from someone who actually worked on the 107 (CH-113A) about the only thing that K-MAX and Chinook had in common was a planetary gear reduction inside the gearcase.
Didn’t they steal the technology from the Germans after ww2, which directly led to all of the US’s helicopters.
This one is prob the mil v12 predesecor and after that they got copied in concept by osprey
@@fikriarieska8450 the Mil v-12 doesn't intermesh.
The V22 doesn't either, and spawned from things like the XV-15. No relation to this aircraft at all.
World War One engineers … “you want to shoot a machine gun through the propellers as well?”
The interruptor gear revolutionized air to air combat.
@@obi-wankenobi1750how did they … shoot before then?
@@Ben-ek1fzthere were no planes before then. Or they attached it to the wings
@@Ben-ek1fz hand held pistols, or wing mounted machine guns
There was also a time where they would angle the propellers in such a way that bullets shot through it would deflect off
This reduced the chance of bullets hitting the prop absolutely destroying it but still had problems
Some aircraft used steel wedges on the rear faces of the propeller for the bullets to angle off of. @@Ben-ek1fz
So the K-Max is a very similar style design, and from what I know used HEAVILY in the modern world for tree felling in hard to access areas where a truck couldn’t get to.
The advantage and development the Kmax has is, it’s extremely thin, but with two rotors, meaning a super high power to weight/drag, and also have a V fuselage meaning the pilot has the ability to hang out into viewing bubbles to see directly below him
And the most important is that the rotors aren’t controlled separately, but instead mechanically linked through the gearbox meaning they physically CANT collide short of a major malfunction
Relevant to this discussion is that the Kmax has just two blades per rotor, maximizing the distance and minimizing any possibility of contact. But three rotors .. yikes. No wonder it failed.
The Kmax isn’t felling the trees it’s logging the trees !
chinook also has the same gearbox system, i’m surprised they didn’t do it originally but you gotta learn somewhere ig lol
Kaman has been making those work for decades. They also made the HH-43.
And it can be controlled remotely
You put the rotors on the same gears and then it doesn't matter what happens to the control system, they mechanically can't collide. It means they are fixed at the same speed though and you need a tail rotor. But because the rotational forces are equalized your tail rotor doesn't need to be on all the time and it saves some energy that way.
I wonder if you could get around the need for a tail rotor with differential collective input. But then again actually having a tail rotor might make yaw input more responsive
@@C.SharpeYou could. It would be extremely hard and would maneuver similar to a helicopter in autorotation.
Contra rotating main rotors, be they tandem (like CH-47), coaxial (anything from Kamov), side-by-side (V-22 in vtol mode or the Mil V-12) or intermeshed like this, completely eliminate the need for a tail rotor.
Yaw control is handled through differential pitch inputs to the rotorhead in different places than normal collective inputs.
@@ERAUsnow ok that's about what I figured was going on, thanks! By the way, are you an Embry Riddle grad or still studying?
@@C.Sharpe grad
The german Flettner FL 265 during WWII and more recently the Kaman Aircraft K-Max during the 80’s and 90’s all displayed intermeshing rotor and both were very successful in fact.
Flettner helicopters sure were impressive.
Red Alert 3 called, they want their twinblade back.
"Twinblade inspection complete!"
*Twinblade inspection complete*
I've seen a modern civilian version of this in person and it gave me ANXIETY
it uses interlocking gears so they cant physically crash into each other unless the gears break
Read this as "in *a* person" and thought, "yeah, I also know someone like this, who gives me anxiety just by watching them".
They still make twin-rotor copters, the main drives are geared together, so the rotors never touch.
The Kaman HH-43 Huskie was a successful design back in the 50's and brought back the same design with the K-MAX.
When you order the Ka-27 from wish 😂
The Kaman Huskie had intermeshing rotorblades. I have photos of one being used by the USAF as a fire and rescue aircraft, at Phan Rang AFB, in 1967.
The first helicopter with intermeshing rotors was the Flettner FL 265.
Twinblade Ready !
The Kaman HH-43 Husky served from 1953 til retired in the early 1970s, with 193 built. So yeah, intermeshing rotors can work well. 😎👍
A version of these twin rotor helicopters Kaman Huskies were found on many US bases during the Vietnam War. They were 4Runners of today's k-max.
One major aspect in helicopters is making sure that the rotor blades are balanced and track along the same plane. If they are not, each blade is acting independent of the rest and severe problems can arise.
In 1962 Kaman came out with a conventional appearing helicopters, the SH-2 Seasprite. But it has a super-cool method in controlling blade pitch control. There is a distance sensor near the tail and it measured the distance to the rotor blade passing over it, and feed that information into a system that individually adjusted the pitch of each blade to keep all of them on the same plane.
Instead of spending hours adjusting them on the ground, it was performed dynamically in flight.
Kaman definitely know how to control helicopter blades.
the vertibird is still a concept
1940’s! That’s bloody early for this sort of design.
You'd be amazed if you look into history of aviation related technology what was made before and during WWII.
for example, the US tarted toying with unmanned aerial cruise missles in the late 1910s with the ketterbug.
Germany had jet powder aircraft in the early 40s starting with the V2 and then leading to the ME-262
Igor Sikorsky flew the worlds first practical helicopter, the VS-300 in Stratford, CT, on sept. 14, 1939.
And keep in mind the wright brothers flew in 1903. Within 40 years, the first jet powered aircraft were entering the skies, and then almost 30 years later from the first jets, man lands on the moon in 1969.
i feel like sometime in the future the US military or NASA might build a helicopter with this design
it's similar design to Ka 52, the flying tank having no tail rotor makes it so hard to take down since the main rotor is easier to cover with shield protection
Already one called the K Max. I hear it is a solid aircraft. I guess it is impossible for the rotors to hit each other due to the gearbox being intertwined. Well in theroy!
@@thesauce1682
Absolutely not similar...
This type of helicopter is called "intermeshing rotor". Both rotors are intermeshing, with one blade passing by the center on one side, than another on the other side. If a mechanical link fails, one rotor will smash the other.
Kaman K-max uses this type of technology, but with 2 blades per rotor.
Now, the Ka-52 has 2 rotors flying in opposite direction, but on 2 different levels ! Not intermeshing at all. The goal is to not have a tail rotor...
It is a completely different design !
Kaman did
Russia has been building them since shortly after WW2. If I recall correctly the Germans were even working on one during the war. These can be extremely reliable. America just likes to make things more confusing and complicated than they need to though. Kiss, keep it simple stupid
That is because it did NOT have a "combining" or "mixing" transmission to ENSURE that didn't happen. Enmeshed rotors are fine if you engineer them properly.
They should make the chinook have 4 rotors like this
Similar issue with the osprey, because it requires 2 rotors to stabilize, losing one causes it to fly out of control.
thats uh, all helicopters. if you don't have the counter torque from a second rotor, tail rotor included, you spin completely uncontrollably without airspeed.
I work with k copters all the time as a wildland firefighter.
Modern synchropters are cool
I love the way this thing looks. Definitely gonna read up on it later.
It works perfectly... as long as it's working perfectly 😊
"Smash each other up" bro choose his word very carefully
Synchropters are so weird. Nowadays, they follow a gear set instead of a computer control system, but it still psychs me out.
They've always been gear linked...
@@ERAUsnowthis design unfortunately "had not got there yet". The vid shows both Kelley XR-8 and XR-10 prototypes, the -10 looks like it has turbine engines, but it had Continental radials. Both relied on RPM control instead of a solid gear system for intermeshing > > great control unit (electric?) > > but I am surprised it ever worked as well as it did
Kaman does it because the rotors are mechanically linked via the gearbox. If it some how collides it would be from a inflight breakup
Couldn't you have the two on the same axel preventing one from turning without the other moving by the same amount? You'd have to work to overcome more friction but it'd prevent an error from causing a collision.
In theory at least. I'm sure they didn't do this for good reason.
You neglected to mention that the newest models are totally safe
Yeah, they stopped trying to develop their own, instead they bought intermeshing helos from K Max. And from what I know they worked well in Afghanistan. These type of Helis are also commonly used by Lumber companies in Mountanous area. Because they have 2X the lift capacity compared to similar sized single rotor Helis.
They don’t touch cause they are linked by a gearbox… that ensures the proper intermeshing timing and they don’t touch unless the gears fail. They simply can’t.
"Twinblade inspection complete"
Idk how people didnt realise this was a bad idea as soon as they heard it.
What you want for this is the rotors to be connected by gears so if 1 fails they both do, they would then also only work by 1 motor
it's a vertibird.
This is probably the inspiration for the vertibird design, pretty cool.
Yeah Kellet had some funky stuff
The kmax is dual rotor bird that is extremely stable and has great lift capacity
Kamen did this very successfully for years. The US Navy used them off ships.
The tail rotor or a similar counter rotating rotor is essential to counteract torque that occurs when helicopters operate. In other words a helicopter is trying to tear itself apart which makes it the most dangerous of all aircraft to fly.
Modern flettner rotor blades are mechanically interlinked and can't get out of sync by that.
Osprey's ancestor 🫠
Nope
The Soviets had a lot of success with this concept
A Wingless Osprey 😂
That project was cancelled. The HH-43 Huskie, also with intermeshing rotors, saw service from the 50's through the Vietnam War.
One good solution is to make the blades constantly mesh together with gears, we time camshafts to run at 20,000 rpm and not collide with pistons either in F1 or motorcycle engines so why not do that to mesh them
Backseat engineer here: what about a common gearbox?
Inspiration for the Vertibird.
Ayo Armored core helicopter
It’s better to either do them like the chinook heavy transport helicopter, or make a coaxial rotor helicopter. Like the Kamov KA-50. Which has the rotors stacked on top of each other. Also with this design it is possible to install an ejector seat that when activated will have all the rotors pop off the helicopter, and the seat shoot out the cockpit.
The rotors also throw each other off so the collision was inevitable thats why helicopters have one main blade not 2-4
this is why the ka-50 and ka-52 use the same block for both tandem rotors
Neither of those are tandem rotor aircraft.
They are coaxial.
When scientists and engineers used their brain 🧠 100 percent
The modern ones use gear linkage between the rotors, I believe.
The German Flettner Fl 282 „Kolibri“ also did this. Such a cute aircraft
The Chinook competitor
Modern designs use a differential to lock the blade positions in respect to each other
No they don't. They use a combining transmission.
I got to see a more modern version in-person at the time it was 1 out of 16 made and was being used to fight forest fires in North Georgia got to meet one of the mechanics working on it and showed the inside of the cockpit and engine.
Is that John Krasinski narrating?
Finally, the answer to that internet argument years ago. Saying that the rotors cannot possibly, mechanically smash into each other because the assumption was; there was a gear designed so that they would never truly overlap
If they're both connected to the same motor with gears they'll always rotate in sync unless one of the gears slips but slipping gears on any helicopter design would be disastrous so this just looks sketchy compared to a single rotor design but it's really not. 🤷♂️
@@DrakeOola true, but if a single rotor design or at least have it connect to a single shaft. Is as fail-safe as you say, then why didn't they do that instead of this?
My take on it is; having a connecting gear puts too much stress on it
@@natechi290either they had some problems with it, like not producing enough lift or they literally just didnt think of it. even those who design stuff like this, make dumb decisions very often
@@natechi290 That would have required a fairly heavy gear box. This design just had the rotors on the end of the crank shaft so a lot lighter. Also to control the copter you tilt each rotor separately so that adds a lot of complexity to a gearbox
@@alantaylor3910you never tilt the rotor head on a helicopter. What you tilt is the swash plate. This is the device that controls the angle of the blades as they spin around the rotor head.
They should have connected them mechanically, which would "really" prevent the rotors from smashing eachover...
There should have been a single motor, or two motors connected to the same transmission, and a gearing system that made it impossible for the rotors to collide.
Yeah they soon realized rotary connections for both of the propellers and connected to the same engine. The US forestry service is looking into making their very own air vehicle..
As a former Navy Airframer I can say the Main Rotor rigs will be fun. If you know you know😂
It had an easy fix. The rpm chain to link them together or something similar to the ones used on 1 Engine fighter planes
aaaahhh back in the days when they could walk on the moon and stuff
KA-27, KA-50, KA-52 live reaction: 🤯
Thats right, the square hole!
The first industrial-size food processor.
The aircraft pictured flew just fine and performed mostly as suspected. It was just very expensive and not practical for what was needed at the time. Yes, the chinook and Kmax both use the technology for heavy lift . The chinook is very fast and agile also due to its length. The Kmax is great for construction, wildfires and logging. it has a tendency to weathervane into the wind which is handy, and has superior visability beneath and behind for the single pilot. It is single engine, the same engine as in the bell 205 and AH-1 at 3/4 or less the weight. Very powerful, safe and efficient.
Still safer than the V22 Osprey...
Nope, not accurate in fact.
Imagine this in sandstorm 💀💀
I thought the two rotors have a mechanical linkage between them that never allows them to collide. Apparently I was wrong.
That's correct. And they sometimes hit each other when that linkage breaks. It's happened in the Chinook as well, which is still used, so his reasoning is wrong
@@Eric-xh9ee Thanks for the clarification 👍
Yeap they still exist .. but their the mini version for the lumber jacks and forest rangers
I thought the rotors would be mechanically linked together, so it would be impossible for them to hit each other
IN THE 1940s. Geez, people were just different then
All they had to do was set them up on the same gears and they wouldn’t have to worry about ratios.
Its not individual controllers. They are both linked physically with gears.
the K=max helo
is tjis type, wotks great . i did a med cruse with one and it preformed as good as our CH=46 and used 1/4 of the maintence
Now they share a gearbox.... so it will never happen again
Similar to the chinook but chinook had rota blades at either end
Its like how a gear is not designed to collide, except the difference being a gear is designed to collide but this isnt.
They used a dual rotor chopper for installing the towers on the teepee chair at sunshine
The russians have mastered this 😊.... Meet the K 52 Aligator
Kamov uses COAXIAL rotors, not intermeshed.
Gods I love it when people show their ignorance.
And this is how the PHILIPS twin totor blade razor was borne. 😂
Set up gears that keep them separate.
I think one of the modern ones of that is the chinok
The Lego Creator set 31096 is awesome, once I find a remote, I'm gonna attach a motor to the helicopter to spin the intermeshed blades faster.
Can't wait to try it out.
that has to be what the vertibird is based on
This concept is used today
This technology could be resurrected for drone technology
That is sick af! Too bad that it failed :(
It garbage the Russian did it,but one above another : more advanced!
Yet the Germans had managed to build and use helicopters with intermeshing blades from 1941 onwards in small numbers with the Flettner Fl 282 Kolibri (Hummingbird)
The military Chinook is a very successful two rotor helicopter, but the rotors aren't meshed.
Can we talk about how modern it looks for it's time??
Father of osprey helicopter
yoooo new kevin macloed song