Mach- and Froude-scaled advanced geometry composite rotor blades are built in-house at Maryland to support research on the center's compound and tiltrotor rigs and advanced rotors tested at the Acoustic Hover Chamber and Hover Tower.
The fabrication facilities include:
- Special-purpose ovens
- Refrigerators for composite plies
- Two four-axis CNC milling machines
- A blade vacuum system and other supporting equipment
Helicopter and tiltrotor blades are fabricated to meet specific research needs, with variations in airfoil profiles, twist (zero to -37 degrees), swept or double-anhedral tips, internal structures, and ply layups. Blades can also be tailored for bending-torsion and extension-shear/torsion coupling.
Blades are instrumented with strain gauges and tested for mass, cross-sectional stiffness, and non-rotating frequencies under free-free and cantilevered boundary conditions.
The facility can fabricate rotors ranging from 1 to 6 ft. in diameter.
Mission to Mars
AGRC's Fabrication Lab also includes equipment that supports the fabrication of future Mars rotor blades, including ultra-thin sections with 1% thickness-to-chord ratios designed for low-Reynolds-number and high-Mach-number operation.
To accommodate these blades and their complex root geometries, the lab has specialized molds, an oven, stencils, and laser-cutting equipment.