Development of the Langley Rotor Test Stand

Abstract

A new Mach-scaled single main rotor test stand, the Langley Rotor Test Stand, was designed, fabricated and tested at NASA Langley by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command. This paper provides a description of the test stand, summarizes the acceptance testing and provides recommendations for future improvements. The objective of the test stand was to modernize the U.S Army's testing capabilities to meet both the short term and long term goals of the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program and basic research needs. The test stand provides a backbone for various rotor and fuselage configurations at a 20-40% scale to study interactional aerodynamics in the wind tunnel. The test stand was purpose built for forward flight testing in the NASA Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel, but is easily portable for testing in other hover facilities and/or wind tunnels.