Darpa Sets Goals For Morphing-Rotor Demo

Jun 9, 2010

By Graham Warwick
Washington

After years of neglect, U.S. rotorcraft

technology is to get a boost from a Pentagon
research program that aims to fly a shape-
changing rotor offering substantially more
payload and range with significantly less noise
and vibration.

Three teams have been awarded contracts for

the initial phase of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency’s Mission Adaptive
Rotor (MAR). Program managers plan to fly an adaptive rotor by 2018 to ready the
technology for the next U.S. military rotorcraft program.

Boeing, Sikorsky and the Bell Boeing tiltrotor team have received 16-month Phase
1 contracts to assess a wide range of adaptive rotor technologies and develop
designs for both a clean-sheet “objective” rotor system and a demonstrator rotor
that can fly on an existing aircraft.

“Adaptation of all blade attributes are on the table: twist, airfoil, chord, stiffness,
rpm., etc.,” says Daniel Newman, Darpa’s MAR program manager. “There are many
technologies available. It’s not just any one, it’s about developing multiple adaptive
technologies that complement each other.”

Newman says rotor design has remained largely unchanged since the current
generation of U.S. military helicopters was introduced in the 1960s and 1970s.
While it has invested heavily in advancing fighter technology to today’s fifth-
generation F-22 and F-35, “the Defense Department has historically underinvested
in rotorcraft, which are still at the equivalent of the F-4 Phantom,” he says.

“The challenge has been developing new rotor technology, because most rotors
since then have been modifications, and the few all-new designs have been risk-
averse. MAR is an all-new, clean-sheet rotor that will be much less constrained.”

The wings of fixed-wing aircraft are far from fixed, with movable flaps and variable
camber that enable lift and drag characteristics to be changed in flight. Wings have
been built that can vary in area, chord, span or sweep. In contrast, the
aerodynamic and geometric characteristics of a rotor blade are fixed during design,
and never change.

The goal of MAR is a rotor that can change its configuration before a mission and in
flight, between mission segments and with every revolution. “Adaptation for
rotorcraft is a huge opportunity because the blades see a wide range of flight
conditions,” says Newman. “They can adapt between mission segments and also
around the rotor azimuth.”
The blades on an adaptive rotor could change their length, sweep, chord, camber,
tip shape, twist, stiffness, rotational speed or other attributes. Newman says
adaptive technology will be “available for any rotor,” including tiltrotors, tail rotors,
propellers and “rotating turbomachinery.”

Industry teams are keeping their MAR cards close to their chests, but Sikorsky talks
illustratively about iPhone-like “apps” that would allow the pilot to select low noise,
high agility, smooth flight or other modes at the touch of an icon on a cockpit
display.

Darpa Sets Goals For Morphing-Rotor Demo (Part II)

Jun 9, 2010

By Graham Warwick
Washington

MAR objectives are aggressive: increase

payload by 30% and range by 40%, and
reduce rotor acoustic-detection range by 50%
and vibration by 90%, compared with a clean-
sheet “non-adaptive,” or conventional, rotor.
“Darpa’s goal is to achieve all the metrics
simultaneously, with the recognition that some
combination will be achieved,” says Newman.

Industry supports the initiative. “Many people

in government, industry and academia regard active rotor technology research as a
major step toward dynamically improved performance and reduced rotor vibration
and noise,” says Rhett Flater, executive director of industry advocate AHS
International. “[The Defense Department] seeks improved range, speed and
payload, as well as safety, survivability and affordability. The MAR program, at least
on paper, addresses many of these needs.”

MAR is an outgrowth of Darpa’s Helicopter Quieting Program (HQP), which

developed high-fidelity analysis tools to predict rotor acoustics. These were
demonstrated in 2008 by correlating the results of analysis and wind-tunnel tests of
Boeing’s Smart active-control rotor. The original plan was to have a second phase,
but Newman says better acoustics “were desirable, but did not justify investment in
new rotor technology.”

In its place, MAR was defined to tackle acoustics, performance and supportability;
the program goals are to be achieved without degrading, and hopefully while
improving, other rotorcraft metrics such as speed, agility, reliability and shipboard
compatibility.

Because the goals are so far-reaching, Newman says, Darpa decided to issue a
“broad agency announcement” rather than a request for proposals, which would
have required bidders to meet specific requirements. This approach allowed the
government “to invest based on the value of each proposal.”

Boeing has been awarded a $3.62-million Phase 1 contract, Bell Boeing $2.86
million, and Sikorsky $5.9 million. Each team has selected a suite of adaptive
technologies for its “point of departure” rotor system, but will assess and integrate
these and others during Phase 1 to substantiate the benefits of an adaptive rotor,
Newman says.

The MAR teams include “multiple small-technology providers, more than will be on
the final design,” he says. Alternative approaches will be evaluated, their costs,
benefits and risks assessed, and design of the objective rotor system revised based
on results. “We stretched Phase 1 to 16 months to allow time for hardware bench
tests to mature technologies,” Newman says.

One of the first tasks for the teams will be to adapt the analysis tools developed
under HQP. “Every design tool assumes rotor parameters are fixed when it is built
and never change. That is invalid [for MAR],” he says. “It is a much more
challenging and complex design process.”

At the end of Phase 1, the teams will have established the benefits of adaptation
versus a fixed design for a clean-sheet rotor; designed a demonstrator rotor to fly
on an existing aircraft; and predicted the benefits of retrofitting an adaptive rotor to
today’s rotorcraft. “That is not one of our metrics, but the customers are
interested,” says Newman.

So far the U.S. Army, Navy and NASA are participating in the MAR program and
providing some funding. The Air Force is “interested,” he says, “and will not be on
the sideline.” During Phase 1, the agency plans to sign up services to which the
rotor technology will be transitioned at the end of the demonstration program.

“Partnerships would allow us to expand technology development and that would

play into competitive prototyping and the industrial base,” says Newman, as
additional funding from the services could allow two or three rotors to be flown.
“The program should fit well into the Defense Department’s planned Vertical Lift
Consortium Initiative to fund research and develop enabling technologies for the
next generation of rotorcraft,” says Flater.

Darpa previously studied, with mixed success, a number of advanced rotorcraft

configurations such as the Canard Rotor/Wing, Heliplane and DiscRotor, but MAR is
different. “This will not be a Darpa rotor. We are not building an asset. We have a
single-minded focus on demonstrating the technology in flight, and we expect
transition to be immediate,” says Newman.

“We expect the next rotorcraft program, whether it is JMR [Joint Multi-Role] or JFTL
[Joint Future Theater Lift], will use this technology,” he says. “If one of these
programs is to start in 2025, they need the technology by 2020.”

Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin

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