Structural Design and Analysis of Cost Effective Rotorcraft for Recovery Purposes

The structural design and analysis of rotorcrafts is a complicated process in terms of material selection and inertial forces acting on it. This article presents the structural design of reliable highperformance rotorcraft in order to enhance the handling qualities during recovery purposes. Airframe structure of the rotorcraft is tailored based on the mission requirements. A low navigation performance is focused under the complex circumstances like flood and forest fire. The cost effective design is proposed with suitable material selection and design optimization. The operating altitude of the rotorcraft is limited such that is can be operated proximate to ground. The proposed model of recovery vehicle is capable to perform under adverse conditions with robustness. Selection and design of structural components for fuselage, rotor blades and landing gear are carried out in this article. A set of ‘primitive’ design variables form the representative design space in the present task of minimizing blade weight under several frequencies. Maintaining the nondimensional frequency and amplitude of the forces against several lifting conditions are analyzed with FEM approach. The aerodynamic coefficients throughout the operational Mach number range are included to assess the total stresses and strains induced. In the future aviation industry, these cost effective designs can be employed in the fire service stations and at critical locations. Keywords— Rotorcraft, Finite Element Modeling, Recovery purposes, Material Optimization.