Project description
Innovative wing designs for next-generation tiltrotor aircraft
The Leonardo Next-Generation Civil Tiltrotor is a tiltrotor aircraft demonstrator developed by Italian company 'Leonardo S.p.A' within the EU Clean Sky 2 program. It is a new helicopter/fixed-wing hybrid vehicle designed to meet the increasing demands of aerial mobility and manoeuvrability in densely populated urban areas. Its configuration will be superior to current architectures for this type of aircraft. The EU-funded FORMOSA project will work on innovative wing concepts. The demonstrator's wings will include several moveable surfaces controlled by complex kinematic mechanisms that will be flight tested in the framework of Clean Sky 2. Specifically, it will employ two control surfaces per wing: a flaperon for lift and control and one that is lowered during vertical take offs.
Objective
The present project is addressed in the framework of CleanSky 2 Fast Rotorcraft (FRC) IADP. In this context, the Next-Generation Civil Tiltrotor (NGCTR) demonstrator will be dedicated to the design, construction and flying of an innovative Civil Tiltrotor technology demonstrator, the configuration of which will go beyond current architectures for this type of aircraft. Indeed, demonstration activities planned in this framework will be aimed to show significant improvement with respect to current tiltrotors’ state-of-the-art.
In particular, this novel tiltrotor configuration will host a peculiar wing that includes several movable surfaces controlled by complex kinematics mechanisms that will be flight tested in the framework of Clean Sky 2. The wing design was conceived to assign a specific function for each movable surface. An inner large flaperon was conceived for download reduction (flap role) while an external flaperon was conceived for roll control as well as for download reduction. The design of the future NGCTR will encourage an innovative solution for the wing movable surfaces able to incorporate multiple functions (download alleviation, flap, aileron) thus reducing the complexity of the actuation system.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
20133 Milano
Italy