Full-scale wind tunnel investigation of a helicopter individual blade control system

This paper discusses the preparations and plans to test an individual rotor blade pitch control system in the 40- by 80- Foot Wind Tunnel at the NASA Ames Research Center. The test will be performed on a full-scale BO-105 rotor system using a control system made by Henschel Flugzeug-Werke, GmbH, Germany. The Individual Blade Control (IBC) actuators have been designed to replace the pitchlinks of the rotor system. The paper presents a brief historical perspective on the development of the individual blade control system and then describes the present IBC actuators and the wind tunnel test hardware. A discussion of the intended test matrix, expected potential benefits of IBC, and simulation results are included.