Strength and stress analysis on helicopter rotor blade grip
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Zularieff Redzwan Sulaiman
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Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to design, analyze and apply a spacer with a different materials
to the unfilled gap of rotor blade grip for an ultra-light helicopter. The unfilled gap of the
blade grip has to be occupied by the spacer in order to obtain the highest grip effectiveness
towards the rotor blade. The absence of the spacer might be fine for certain length of rotor
blade but it would be wasted if the efficiency of the rotor blade grip ability is not fully
utilized. Therefore, these empty spaces of the blade grip are better to be filled in by some
sort of materials as the fewer the empty space of the blade grip, the better the grip blade
towards the rotor blade it will be. For this project, the chosen materials to fill the empty
spaces are epoxy, car body filler and aluminium. The objective for these materials to be filled
into the non occupied blade grip area are to act as a spacer (support) and making the blade
position more rigid and compact. However, different materials has different strength thus
producing different amount of blade grip effectiveness. In order to analyze and monitor each
of the different materials behavior, a reliable test can be done. Software such as
SOLIDWORKS is used because it offers a simulation test. From the simulation test, strength
and stress can be analyzed by setting up a specific constraints and pre-conditions. Besides,
it is important to verify the simulation analysis which can be obtained by taking the rotor
blade tip deflection from the lab experiment and compared together with the simulation
displacement results. As a reference, to have a better insight towards the simulation situation,
the model has been setup according to cantilever support situation where it is free of external
load except for gravitational force. In a nutshell, from the simulation results, it can be
observed that aluminium spacer is the best material to enhance the blade grip effectiveness
where all of the results are discussed in this thesis.