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
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