By IANS,
Washington : The US defence department is funding a radical helicopter design called the DiscRotor that would have a spinning disc instead of conventional spinning rotor blades at high speeds.
The DiscRotor, which is being funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), would have a large circular saucer-like hub on top with retractable rotor blades extending from the saucer’s edge.
The aircraft would take off, land and hover just like an ordinary helicopter but at high speeds the blades would retract into the central hub disc, which would continue to rotate and function as a “rotating circular wing”, Gizmag.com reported.
“The Disc-Rotor Compound Helicopter programme will develop a new type of compound helicopter capable of high-efficiency hover, high speed flight, and seamless transition between these flight states,” according to a DARPA statement.
The agency plans to spend $3 million on the project in financial year 2008, and another $6 million in 2009. The funding would go to Boeing, which will carry out “wind tunnel testing… in order to establish critical feasibility of the DiscRotor concept… and develop options for a flying DiscRotor demonstrator”.
The planned aircraft would be capable of long-range high speed (600-700 km/h) of an airplane and vertical takeoff and hover capability of a helicopter.
Such an aircraft would provide mobility and responsiveness for troop and cargo insertion and satisfy the military’s requirement for high-speed vertical take-off and hover capable vehicles, the agency said.