The effect of varying stiffness in CH-47 rotor blades on Rotor Track and Balance
M.C.H. van der Aa (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Andrei Anisimov – Mentor (TU Delft - Structural Integrity & Composites)
R. M. Groves – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Structural Integrity & Composites)
Rob Brink – Graduation committee member (Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre NLR)
Arjan de Jong – Graduation committee member (Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre NLR)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
This work is a part of the Automated Rotor Blade Inspection (ARBI) project. ARBI aims to improve the rotorcraft RTB process with novel rotor blade measurement equipment. The objective of this research is to investigate how the variation in structural properties of the rotor blades composite structure affects the dynamical response during the RTB process. It is hypothesized that the variation in stiffness and shift in the center of gravity of the structure is caused by in-service defects and repairs.
The results of the NDI inspections give a detailed overview of what type of non-uniformities are found in CH-47 rotor blades. A 2D analytical model is developed to quantify structural blade properties of blades that contain non-uniformities. This model provides the ability to determine the impact of these non-uniformities on the structural parameters based on NDI results and helps to improve the FEM model that is used for RTB simulation.