Interaction effects on the conversion corridor of tiltrotor aircraft
Wesley Appleton, Antonio Filippone, Nicholas Bojdo
Abstract
Abstract This paper presents an aeromechanics investigation of tiltrotor aircraft through the conversion regime of flight. The effects of the rotors-on-wing, rotors-on-empennage and wing-on-empennage interactions were investigated singularly and collectively to assess their impacts on trim behaviour, performance and conversion boundaries. The rotors-on-wing download was found to be dominant in the prediction of hover and low-speed flight performance and had a degrading effect overall. The fuselage pitch attitude and stick position were found to be significantly affected by the empennage interaction cases throughout the conversion domain. The large flap/flaperon settings used to alleviate the rotor download contributed considerably to the low-speed trim behaviour. The conversion boundaries were found to be insensitive to all the interaction cases, though the min-speed boundary was reduced marginally due to the wing-on-empennage interaction. The results showed that the combined interactions were important factors to accurately predict the trim behaviour and aircraft performance throughout the conversion corridor.