STRENGTH ANALYSIS OF A PROTOTYPE COMPOSITE HELICOPTER ROTOR BLADE SPAR

Abstract

This paper investigates the strenght of a conceptual main rotor blade dedicated to an unmanned helicopter. The blade is made of smart materials in order to optimize the efficiency of the aircraft by increasing its aerodynamic performance. This purpose was achieved by performing a series of strength calculations for the blade of a prototype main rotor used in an unmanned helicopter. The calculations were done with the Finite Element Method (FEM) and software like CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) which uses advanced techniques of computer modeling of load in composite structures. Our analysis included CAD (Computer-Aided Design) modeling the rotor blade, importing the solid model into the CAE software, defining the simulation boundary conditions and performing strength calculations of the blade spar for selected materials used in aviation, i.e. fiberglass and carbon fiber laminate. This paper presents the results and analysis of the numerical calculations.