Future Helicopters Rotor Blades Getting SMART

Tests in a NASA wind tunnel of this SMART rotor hub confirm the ability of
advanced helicopter-blade active control strategies to reduce vibrations and
noise. Credits: NASA

Helicopters today are considered a loud, bumpy and inefficient mode for day-to-
day domestic travel—best reserved for medical emergencies, traffic reporting
and hovering over celebrity weddings. But NASA research into rotor blades made
with shape-changing materials could change that view.

Twenty years from now, large rotorcraft could be making short hops between
cities such as New York and Washington, carrying as many as 100 passengers
at a time in comfort and safety.
The piezoelectric actuators can change and adapt the rotor blade while in
motion. Credits: NASA
Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials (such as crystals,
certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA and various proteins) in response to
applied mechanical stress. The word piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure and
latent heat. It is derived from the Greek word  piezein, which means to squeeze or press, and ēlektron,
which means amber, an ancient source of electric charge. French physicists Jacques and Pierre
Curie discovered piezoelectricity in 1880.
The piezoelectric effect results from the linear electromechanical interaction between the mechanical
and electrical states in crystalline materials with no inversion symmetry. The piezoelectric effect is
a reversible process: materials exhibiting the piezoelectric effect (the internal generation of electrical
charge resulting from an applied mechanical force) also exhibit the reverse piezoelectric effect, the
internal generation of a mechanical strain resulting from an applied electrical field. For example, lead
zirconate titanate crystals will generate measurable piezoelectricity when their static structure is
deformed by about 0.1% of the original dimension. Conversely, those same crystals will change about
0.1% of their static dimension when an external electric field is applied to the material. The inverse
piezoelectric effect is used in the production of ultrasonic sound waves.
Nicholas A. J. Lieven "Piezoelectric actuation of helicopter rotor blades", Proc. SPIE 4331, Smart Structures and
Materials 2001: Damping and Isolation, (2 July 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.432727
SMART rotor hub set up for testing in the 40- by 80-foot wind tunnel at NASA's
Ames Research Center. Credits: NASA

Routine transportation by rotorcraft could help ease air traffic congestion around
the nation's airports. But noise and vibration must be reduced significantly before
the public can embrace the idea.

"Today's limitations preclude us from having such an airplane," said William

Warmbrodt, chief of the Aeromechanics Branch at NASA's Ames Research
Center in California," so NASA is reaching beyond today's technology for the
future."

The solution could lie in rotor blades made with piezoelectric materials that
flex when subjected to electrical fields, not unlike the way human muscles
work when stimulated by a current of electricity sent from the brain.
Helicopter rotors rely on passive designs, such as the blade shape, to optimize
the efficiency of the system. In contrast, an airplane's wing has evolved to include
flaps, slats and even the ability to change its shape in flight. NASA researchers
and others are attempting to incorporate the same characteristics and
capabilities in a helicopter blade.
NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as
DARPA, the U.S. Army, and The Boeing Company have spent the past decade
experimenting with smart material actuated rotor, or SMART, technology, which
includes the piezoelectric materials.

"SMART rotor technology holds the promise of substantially improving the

performance of the rotor and allowing it to fly much farther using the same
amount of fuel, while also enabling much quieter operations. There is more than
just promise that SMART Rotor technology can reduce noise significantly.

The only full-scale SMART Rotor ever constructed in the United States was run
through a series of wind tunnel tests between February and April 2008 in the
National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex at Ames. The SMART Rotor partners
joined with the U.S. Air Force, which operates the tunnel, to complete the
demonstration.

A SMART Rotor using piezoelectric actuators to drive the trailing edge flaps was
tested in the 40- by 80-foot tunnel in 155-knot wind to simulate conditions the
rotor design would experience in high-speed forward flight. The rotor also was
tested at cruise speed conditions of 124 knots to determine which of three trailing
edge flap patterns produced the least vibration and noise. One descent condition
also was tested.

Results showed that the SMART Rotor can reduce by half the amount of noise it
puts out within the controlled environment of the wind tunnel. The ultimate test of
SMART rotor noise reduction capability would come from flight tests on a real
helicopter, where the effects of noise that reproduces through the atmosphere
and around terrain could be evaluated as well.

The test data also will help future researchers use computers to simulate how
differently-shaped SMART Rotors would behave in flight under various conditions
of altitude and speed. For now that remains tough to do.

"Today's supercomputers are unable to accurately model the unsteady

physics of helicopter rotors and their interaction with the air," Warmbrodt
said. "But we're working on it."

NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate