Posted on 02/08/2018 5:58:07 PM PST by gaijin
2-min YouTube video showing V-280 Valor well out of hover.
Nacelles are not yet fully rotated forward, as pictured above, but clip shows project coming along nicely.
Nacelles feature rotational gear overlaid with video MOSAIC, apparently this feature is still technically sensitive;
Osprey nacelles rotate as an integrated unit, Valor nacelles are bisected into fixed and rotational subcomponents.
And every video I've seen so far has had the flexible shaft joint at the articulation blurred out deliberately. I wonder what "magic" Bell has come up with to handle the torque required to drive the rotors, yet be able to articulate through 90+ degrees.
Valor is right. You need balls of steel to fly in this contraption.
When this tech finally comes to the civvy side, execs could fly from LA to San Fran, then land atop a tall building, no taxi or car rental required.
Cool..!
A helicopter is already 1000's of moving pieces waiting to fall apart. I can only imagine what this thing is.
The video shows a helicopter. What’s the point or releasing this video without showing horizontal flight?
Cuz up until now, all other vids either show the Valor taxiing or hopping up and down a little —sorta boring.
Possibly because they are proceeding very deliberately through a test protocol that involves advancing the engines a little bit more on every flight.
They want to make sure that once they put the engines in the full-forward position, they can definitely bring them back into the vertical position.
Typically flight testing on a prototype is done very, very carefully. This goes double for aircraft of a new type, or that are using a new technology. In this case, there is new technology in a flight-critical system, namely the rotor tilt mechanism.
Also, they don't want a repeat of the painful development process of the V-22, during which there were several fatalities (followed by many more fatalities once the system had been accepted by the military).
Too many Jesus nuts.
I hope it’s quieter than an Osprey at 30 degree rotor tilt.
>>A helicopter is already 1000’s of moving pieces waiting to fall apart.<<
Best definition of a helicopter I’ve ever read.
Thanks for the posting, gaijin.
I’m a Bell retiree (’65-’01) and I worked on the development and deployment of the XV-15 and the V-22, and now the V-280 has been hatched.
Only two of the XV-15’s were produced to prove the concept. One was severely damaged when a tornado hit our flight research facility. The other one is in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in D.C.
Bell has been going back and forth between tilting just the rotor or the entire nacelle for decades. Here are some images of the Bell XV-3 tilt rotor from the 1950s and 60s:
In the XV-3 case, the single radial piston engine was inside the fuselage just aft of the wing-fuselage junction with a transmission and drive shafts carrying power out to the wingtip counter rotating blade assemblies. With only one engine, the need for cross shafting between the rotors was eliminated since loss of engine torque would affect both rotors equally and not produce asymmetric rotor power.
That’s the problem with twin engine tilt rotor designs; it requires cross shafting from one nacelle to the other so that the rotor with the engine out can continue to receive power from the other engine. Makes for a complicated wing structure. (It’s even more complicated when the blades must fold and the entire wing must rotate to align with the fuselage for shipboard stowage purposes.)
If the VX-280 power plant/tilt rotor design is scalable to the MV-22, I suspect the Marine Corps and other users would only be too glad to get out of the tilting nacelle business. In the meantime, I hope a solution to the MV-22 deck/runway heating problem can be found. Perhaps a variation on the jet thrust reverser to redirect the heat (most of it anyway) upward where the turning rotors could disperse it?
In the current age of drone advanced remote control technology, why do they need to risk the lives of test pilots at all?
Ten thousand rivits, flying in formation.
You seriously think the hippie commie scum will allow that in Frisco?
Bell has been going back and forth between tilting just the rotor or the entire nacelle for decades. Here are some images of the Bell XV-3 tilt rotor from the 1950s and 60s:
In the XV-3 case, the single radial piston engine was inside the fuselage just aft of the wing-fuselage junction with a transmission and drive shafts carrying power out to the wingtip counter rotating blade assemblies. With only one engine, the need for cross shafting between the rotors was eliminated since loss of engine torque would affect both rotors equally and not produce asymmetric rotor power.
That’s the problem with twin engine tilt rotor designs; it requires cross shafting from one nacelle to the other so that the rotor with the engine out can continue to receive power from the other engine. Makes for a complicated wing structure. (It’s even more complicated when the blades must fold and the entire wing must rotate to align with the fuselage for shipboard stowage purposes.)
If the VX-280 power plant/tilt rotor design is scalable to the MV-22, I suspect the Marine Corps and other users would only be too glad to get out of the tilting nacelle business. In the meantime, I hope a solution to the MV-22 deck/runway heating problem can be found. Perhaps a variation on the jet thrust reverser to redirect the heat (most of it anyway) upward where the turning rotors could disperse it?
Looks like a V-22 sex with a Blackhawk. There’s some recessive V tail Bonanza genes on one side of the family.
Have they never considered a ducted fan design instead of rotors? At altitude, at least, troops could bail out in an emergency, without getting chopped to bits by the rotors.
Already, any rotor-failure looks like it’s going to instantly cut the fuselage in half.
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