Helicopter Flight
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Helicopter, or rotary-wing, flight is distinctly different from traditional air, or fixed-wing, flight. An airplane by its design wants to fly, and if it does not experience any unusual interference, it will fly. A helicopter, by nature, does not want to fly. It stays in the air through a variety of forces and controls that all work in opposition to one another. If this balance of forces, which is quite delicate, is interrupted, a helicopter will stop flying immediately with disastrous results. Unlike a plane, a helicopter never glides. The main distinction between helicopter and airplane flight comes from the aerodynamics of rotary wing flight, i.e., the rotor systems. The rotary wing is rotated on a helicopter in order to achieve lift. Any aircraft that utilizes a rotary wing is known as a rotorcraft. There are three types of rotorcraft: the autogyro; the gyroplane; the helicopter. Helicopters offer advantages over traditional aircraft. For example, they are able to fly at low speeds and can hover. They also have the advantage of being able to take off or land in restricted areas traditional aircraft cannot. While the rotary wing makes the helicopter fly differently than a traditional aircraft, a helicopter still operates on principles similar to traditional air flight. In the most basic of terms, “the helicopter flies by replacing the fixed wings of the ‘normal’ airplane with a set of rotating wings – the roto
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e of attack is an aerodynamic angle. This angle is the angle between the chord line and the resultant airflow. The higher the value of this angle the greater will be the angle of attack. However, the pilot can only partially control this angle as it is also affected by airspeed, bladepitch angle, rotor RPM and other influences. All of these forces have an influence because the design of the helicopter creates different airflow values, “Even in the hover, as the blade rotates around the disk each segment sees different horizontal and vertical velocity, and hence different resultant airflows and AoAs.”
When we move to the physics behind the “lift” of a helicopter we come into contact with two primary theories, one known as Bernoulli’s principle and the other Newton’s Third Law of physics. Lift is a force that occurs by the airfoil’s reaction to the airflow passing over it. One explanation lift is explained by the Bernoulli principle which mathematician Daniel Bernoulli originated that “describes the relationship between internal fluid pressure and fluid velocity. His principle, essentially a statement of the conservation of energy, explains, at least in part, why an airfoil develops an aerodynamic force.” In layman’s term
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Third Law, Newtons Law, Rotary-Wing Flight, INTRODUCTION Helicopter, George Cayley, WWI WWII, Daniel Bernoulli, Sikorsky Russian, AD Chinese, Bridgeport Connecticut, angle attack, helicopter flight, lift drag, forces acting, forces acting helicopter, center gravity, blade pitch, acting helicopter, pitch angle, rotary-wing flight, rotary wing, blade pitch angle, mean camber line, jan 22 1999, newtons third law,
Approximate Word count = 3768
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
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