The Maryland Tiltrotor Rig is a 3-bladed semi-span tiltrotor rig with gimballed and hingeless hubs supporting up to 5-ft diameter rotors for whirl flutter and vibratory loads.
The rotor can tilt from 0 degrees (airplane mode) to 90 degrees (helicopter mode) at static increments of 5 degrees.
The specialty of the rig is its interchangeable hubs, blades, wing spar, and pylon location, along with its electric drive and high-bandwidth electric actuation.
Features:
- The main rotor has a 64-channel slip ring for rotating-frame sensors—blade flap, pitch link loads, blade pitch inputs, gimbal flapping, and a shaft torque gauge.
- The main rotor is driven by a 40 hp water-cooled permanent magnet electric motor with a direct drive.
- The swashplate actuators can provide high steady inputs -2 to +60 degrees collective, +/- 16 degrees of cyclic, and small transient inputs of 0.2-6 degrees peak to peak.
- The gimballed hub and blades are loosely 1:5.26 Froude-scaled to the XV-15 rotor.
- The hingeless hub with the same blades are loosely 1:5.47 Froude-scaled the Boeing 26-ft diameter Model 222.
