How does helicopter tilt?

How does helicopter tilt?

Our helicopter has been up in the air since last post “How does helicopter go up in the air?” But how it can be moved forward or backward or tilt right or left? Its mechanism is little complex but really interesting.

Note: If you don’t know what is tilt then please goto google.com and search “tilt” and see the result. 🙂
As my nature, I always try to find the answer with thinking without making any search on internet.
Let me share my thoughts. I thought, helicopter can make down one side of its rotor that tilts the helicopter in other side but it is useless thing because if we try to make down one side of rotor then rotor will balance again itself in air and helicopter will be tilted but will not be moved one side as effectively as it must be because rotor’s center is a mounted point.
After that I thought that maybe there is a moveable weight that changes the center of gravity of helicopter that tilts the helicopter in one direction. It seems good point but not much effective. So, then I think about angle of blades because I know the angle of blades is the main thing that makes the helicopter up in the air. But how? I found the really amazing thing on Wikipedia. Let me describe this thing in my own words.

There are two swash plates. One is fixed but tiltable using controlling rods and the other one is rotatable. The Fixed one is tiltable in all four directions that changes the angle of blades individually. Rotatable plate is just rotating parallel to fixed plate. Let understand the working in four tilting directions.

Forward Tilt: Angle of blades will be zero at back and will be max downward at front.
Backward Tilt: Opposite of Forward Tilt.
Left Tilt: Angle of blades will be zero at right and will be max at left.
Right Tilt: Opposite of Left Tilt.

It is because of rods connected from swash plate to blades. Tilting of swash plate pull the rods located on one side and push the rods up on other side.

See these pictures for better understand the process.

You can see in second picture that when a blade goes in left top side (picture ref.), its angle decreases towards zero and increase when this blade comes to right bottom. This is how the swash plate works and makes helicopter to be tilted in one direction. When this tilt occurs, blades pushes air downward from one side at fast speed and on other side with low speed and in response helicopter tilts. See this picture

The combination of all four tilting points that make helicopter be tilted in any direction (North to East to South to West).

Now, we can go to meet our beloved friends using our helicopter. Hope you have enjoyed it. 🙂

Source: wikipedia.com

How does helicopter go up in the air

How does helicopter go up in the air

Helicopter is an aircraft that flies with the help of a rotor like fan that push the air downwards and in response helicopter goes up. Rotor is big enough to lift the weight of Helicopter. The mechanism of rotor is very simple and I think everyone can understand in a single preview of working. I am just describing some aspects of rotor that enable the helicopter to be flying.

There are two rotors in basic type of helicopter. One is mounted on top (Main Rotor) that enable the helicopter to be up in the air and other one is on the tail (Tail Rotor) that balances the torque produced by Main Rotor as a side effect.
Each rotor has two blades at 180(deg) and can also be rotatable at its own axis that makes lift. See this picture.

If blades are at 0 (deg) then there will be no lift in helicopter and if blades are at max angle then Helicopter goes up fast. You can easily understand by imagining this scenario.

Now, about Tail Rotor, Tail Rotor’s main purpose is to balance the torque produced in the response of Main Rotor’s motion. It is also used to rotate the helicopter along the axis perpendicular to the Earth by decreasing and increasing the angles of its blades. See this picture.

In this picture, you can see that Main Rotor is rotating about its mounted point. Main Rotor’s rotates by the force applied by helicopter in anti-clockwise, because of this force, an opposite force will be generated by Main Rotor to helicopter because of resistance produced due to inertia and air and some other factors. This opposite force tries to rotate the helicopter in opposite direction that’s called torque. This process is so fast that’s why this force produces much torque as soon as the rotor speed increases. So balancing of this force is necessary to make the helicopter stable in a direction otherwise helicopter will also rotates and I think, no one will want to enjoy this adventure. So, Tail Rotor is assembled vertically in tail of helicopter that rotates and cancels out the torque to make the helicopter stable. Imagine this whole process. It is really easy to understand.

Now, our helicopter is up in the air. 🙂

Source: wikipedia.com