The Tiltrotor
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:28 am
In response to C16's very interesting post on this aircraft here, I have taken the liberty of setting up its own thread.
https://ops-normal.org/viewtopic.php?p=151286#p151286
To be fair to myself, I did watch C16's video of the AW609's test pilot but my concentration was broken by my better half, who in the spirit of decimating my bookshelf continually interrupted me, asking if this or that book could be thrown out (the answer to all of these questions being "no"), and I missed some of the more salient points in the video. I have watched it again in peace this morning but am still unconvinced of the AW609's ability to perform safely on one engine out in certain scenarios.
Let me posit one emergency situation that I can't get my head around. I do this by way of being a devil's advocate, and not being vexatious or tedious for the sake of it, as I want to learn and think about this craft, my knowledge of this aircraft type being basically nil.
Let's us say the aircraft is in flight, flying with the rotors tilted forward, flying pretty much as a normal fixed wing aircraft , when the critical engine (unless of course the tiltrotor has contra rotating props, which would make sense) or simply an engine goes bang and is mechanically destroyed, therefore being unable to rotate or not being able to be driven by the turbine and simply wind milling. One then assumes the connecting drive shaft from the good engine will shear, as it is designed to do, as in a twin helicopter for example, but now we will have the classical engine out scenario in a twin engined aircraft with the much greater length of the prop/rotor exacerbating the control issues encountered by the pilot. How is the pilot going to be able contol that situation with the enormous drag from the one stopped, or even worse, unfeathered, wind milling rotor as the mighty rotor on the other "wing" continues" to run yawing the aircraft massively, and very quickly, resulting in roll, resulting an a loss of control?
Caco
https://ops-normal.org/viewtopic.php?p=151286#p151286
To be fair to myself, I did watch C16's video of the AW609's test pilot but my concentration was broken by my better half, who in the spirit of decimating my bookshelf continually interrupted me, asking if this or that book could be thrown out (the answer to all of these questions being "no"), and I missed some of the more salient points in the video. I have watched it again in peace this morning but am still unconvinced of the AW609's ability to perform safely on one engine out in certain scenarios.
Let me posit one emergency situation that I can't get my head around. I do this by way of being a devil's advocate, and not being vexatious or tedious for the sake of it, as I want to learn and think about this craft, my knowledge of this aircraft type being basically nil.
Let's us say the aircraft is in flight, flying with the rotors tilted forward, flying pretty much as a normal fixed wing aircraft , when the critical engine (unless of course the tiltrotor has contra rotating props, which would make sense) or simply an engine goes bang and is mechanically destroyed, therefore being unable to rotate or not being able to be driven by the turbine and simply wind milling. One then assumes the connecting drive shaft from the good engine will shear, as it is designed to do, as in a twin helicopter for example, but now we will have the classical engine out scenario in a twin engined aircraft with the much greater length of the prop/rotor exacerbating the control issues encountered by the pilot. How is the pilot going to be able contol that situation with the enormous drag from the one stopped, or even worse, unfeathered, wind milling rotor as the mighty rotor on the other "wing" continues" to run yawing the aircraft massively, and very quickly, resulting in roll, resulting an a loss of control?
Caco