What Is a Rotor?

A vehicle's braking system plays an essential role in safe driving. A rotor, sometimes referred to as a disc, is an essential part of the disc braking system. There should be a brake rotor located on each end of each axle. When this part of the vehicle is in good condition, the rotor helps to ensure that the car stops in an effective manner. When this part is not in good condition, both driving and braking can be problematic and dangerous. Rotors can often be visible without removing or changing any of the other parts on a vehicle. They can be viewed by looking through spaces in the rim of a vehicle's tire. The rotor is usually a dark metallic part that is flat, smooth, and round. It may appear to be striated. If it is worn, it may be possible to see or feel grooves in it.The rotor is a piece of metal that interacts with a vehicle's brake pads. When a driver presses the brake pedal, an inside and outside brake of each wheel clasps a rotor. The harder the brake pedal is pressed, the tighter the grip should be. The tighter the grip is, the more the vehicle should stop. In most circumstances, a rotor can be removed and replaced. Doing this, however, will require the removal of the tire. This means that it is usually necessary for the vehicle to be jacked up. It may also require the removal of the brake caliper, which is the contraption that holds the brake pads.The rotor has a hole in center. Once any parts that may be obstructing it have been removed, the rotor should slide off the axle. A replacement can then be slid on. Replacing rotors should not be necessary every time brakes are replaced, but a person should expect to replace them periodically if he keeps a vehicle for an extended period. Grooves in the rotor are one indication that its condition is deteriorating. If the grooves are not too deep, it may be possible to skim, or true, the part. This is done when it is removed and a machine is used to smooth the surface. In some instances, people allow their rotors to deteriorate to a point where they cannot be skimmed. When this is the case, driving and braking the vehicle often become problematic. Braking is likely to involve inefficient stopping speeds and the sound of grinding metal. Metallic sounds and vibration of the steering wheel may be experienced while driving. Continuing to drive a vehicle in this condition can be dangerous.

Fgure 1 Rotor

In most circumstances, a rotor can be removed and replaced. Doing this, however, will require the removal of the tire. This means that it is usually necessary for the vehicle to be jacked up. It may also require the removal of the brake caliper, which is the contraption that holds the brake pads. The rotor has a hole in center. Once any parts that may be obstructing it have been removed, the rotor should slide off the axle. A replacement can then be slid on. Replacing rotors should not be necessary every time brakes are replaced, but a person should expect to replace them periodically if he keeps a vehicle for an extended period. Grooves in the rotor are one indication that its condition is deteriorating. If the grooves are not too deep, it may be possible to skim, or true, the part. This is done when it is removed and a machine is used to smooth the surface. In some instances, people allow their rotors to deteriorate to a point where they cannot be skimmed. When this is the case, driving and braking the vehicle often become problematic. Braking is likely to involve inefficient stopping speeds and the sound of grinding metal. Metallic sounds and vibration of the steering wheel may be experienced while driving. Continuing to drive a vehicle in this condition can be dangerous.

There is electric motor rotor having worn out collector. Deterioration - 1,3 mm depth flute in place of brushes contact.

What Is a Rotor System?

A rotor system refers to the bladed, propeller-like mechanism that is attached to the top of a helicopter. The system is made up of several blades connected to a hub, which is fastened to the aircrafts mast. Rotor systems are responsible for providing a helicopter with vertical movement and propulsion. The three main variations of this system are articulated, semi-rigid, and rigid. Helicopters rely on the main rotor, located on top of the craft, for both lift and thrust. Lift is responsible for vertical movement and for sustaining the weight of the helicopter once in the air, while thrust is responsible for propelling the craft once aloft. Thrust accounts for forward, lateral, and reverse movements. Similar to propeller driven airplanes, the movement of the blades through the air creates thrust, not the engine itself. Unlike propeller driven airplanes, the blades of the helicopter are also responsible for lift, which complicates movement once airborne. While there are different rotor system designs, most contain the same key structural elements. Rotor systems are affixed to a central mast that rises from the helicopters engine and transmission. The mast is a single beam that is turned by the engine and causes the blades atop the mast to rotate. Below the blades is the hub, which consists of various mechanisms that allow the blades to be adjusted for flight in different environments. In 2011, the majority of helicopters in service utilize an articulated rotor system. Articulated systems employ three or more blades, with hinges that allow each blade to move individually. The blades can move up and down relative to the hub, forwards and backwards, and can be tilted relative to the central parallel axis running through the length of the blade. This is advantageous in most environments and less expensive than its hingeless counterpart. Capable of the same function as an articulated system, a rigid rotor system forgoes the traditional hinges of the articulated type. Instead, the rigid system allows the same individual movement of each blade as the articulated system by utilizing composite flexures and elastomeric bearings. These materials allow the blades and portions of the rotor system to bend, negating any need for hinges. The bending blades reduce oscillation and improve the aircrafts responsiveness. Rigid rotor systems are often used in specialized aircraft, such as those used by the military, where price is of no concern, but limited in other areas because of the high cost. Semi-rigid rotor systems have only two blades, and neither is capable of independent movement. Instead, the entire hub moves atop the mast when in flight. This system is also called a seesaw rotor because of how the blades move. As the hub tilts and one blade moves down, the opposite blade is forced up. This system is not as frequently used as the other two.

What Is a Rotor Shaft?

A rotor shaft can be found in one of two places on a helicopter: the main rotor blade and the tail. The main rotor shaft is attached to the main rotor blade and transfers the power from the engine to the blades. The tail rotor shaft is located along the length of the tail section and powers the tail rotor. The tail rotor makes flight possible for the helicopter by providing power to maintain straight flight and altitude. In order for the helicopter to move forward and backward, the blades of the main rotor must be able to pivot on the rotor shaft. The main blades on a helicopter are not affixed directly to the aircraft's engine. In most cases, the main rotor shaft is affixed to the engine via a gearbox. This gearbox allows the engine to operate at a reduced speed while maintaining rotor speed. The tail rotor shaft also operates off of a gearbox that matches the speed of the tail rotor to that of the larger main rotor. The pilot is able to manipulate the speed of the tail rotor by adjusting a hand control mounted beside the pilot seat. Without this small rotor controlling the position of the helicopter's tail, the helicopter would simply spin violently out of control. The ability to control the flight characteristics of the helicopter makes the tail rotor shaft a primary target for enemy fire. The relatively small diameter of the shaft makes it prone to small arms fire as well as larger anti-aircraft weaponry. In many combat designated helicopters, the tail rotor as well as the tail rotor shaft are armor protected. In cases in which the tail rotor is shot away, the helicopter is going to come down violently no matter how good the pilot is. The instances of successfully landing a helicopter with the tail rotor damaged is so rare that when a military pilot is successful in doing so, it nearly always results in receiving a medal or citation. Maintenance of the rotor shafts is scheduled on a frequent basis. Bearings and bearing mounts are replaced after a predetermined number of hours of use. This schedule varies by manufacturer and model of helicopter. A worn bearing can lead to an unbalanced shaft and subsequent vibration. This vibration can lead to bearing failure and thus tail rotor failure and the possible crash of the helicopter. Routinely changing the bearings reduces the risk of this type of failure causing problems for the helicopter and its crew.

Types of Rotor Systems

Objective(s)
Describe the 3 blade movements, and describe the 3+ different types of rotor systems.

Description
1. Blade forces and movements 2. Types of rotor systems 3. Other rotor systems

Instructional aids
None specified

Content
Blade forces and movements
Feathering is rotation of the blade along its long axis, and allows the blade pitch to change. Changing the collective setting or making cyclic inputs changes feathering. Flapping is the vertical movement of the blade in its plane of rotation. Flapping occurs because of differences in lift between the advancing and retreating blades. Lead-lag (also called hunting) is the fore-aft movement of the blade in its plane of rotation. Acceleration forces on the blade cause lead-lag movements.

Types of rotor systems

Rigid rotor systems o Only utilize a feathering hinge o Lead-lag and flapping forces are absorbed by the rotor hub Semi-rigid rotor systems o 2-blade rotor systems o Has a feathering hinge o Main rotor hub tilts (or teeters) to allow for flapping: as one blade flaps up, the other flaps down o Lead-lag forces are absorbed by blade flex Fully-articulated rotor systems o 3+ blade rotor systems o Has feathering and flapping hinges o Lead-lag hinges on each blade

Other rotor systems

Will be covered in detail in anti-torque systems Tandem, in-line main rotor systems (eg, Chinook), sychropter (K-MAX), coaxial (KA50/KA-52)

Rigid rotor
The rigid rotor is a mechanical model that is used to explain rotating systems. An arbitrary rigid rotor is a 3-dimensional rigid object, such as a top. To orient such an object in space three angles known as Euler angles are required. A special rigid rotor is the linear rotor which requires only two angles to describe its orientation. An example of a linear rotor is a diatomic molecule. More general molecules like water (asymmetric rotor), ammonia (symmetric rotor), or methane (spherical rotor) are 3dimensional, see classification of molecules.

Semi-Rigid Main Rotors

A semi-rigid main rotor is always a 2 bladed rotor system. It gets its name from the fact that it does not have a lead-lag hinge, the way a fully articulated rotor system does. The rotor system can be said to be rigid in-plane, because the blades are not free to lead and lag, but they are not rigid in the flapping plane (through the use of a teeter hinge). Therefore the rotor is not rigid, but not fully articulated either, so we call it semi-rigid. The rotor systems we will look at here are 2 bladed teetering systems. The Robinson and the Bell teetering system differ because the Robinson includes coning hinges in addition to the teeter hinge, while the Bell system simply cones by bending the blades.
Basic R22 Head
Teeter Hinge

The dark blue arrow is pointing to the teeter hinge. This central hinge allows the entire rotor head to tilt left and right in order to allow the blades to flap. When one blade flaps up, the other flaps down. The entire mechanical arrangement works like a child's see-saw (teeter-totter) toy.
Coning Hinge

The light blue arrows point to the two coning hinges. These hinges allow each blade to move up and down independently of the other blade. This would normally happen during coning, when each blade moves up until centrifugal force balances lift. During times of high lift, or low RPM, the blades will be coned quite high, while during low lift or high RPM, the blades will tend to be lower. The holes in the rotor head above the coning hinges serve no purpose except that they may be used to hoist the rotor system.

Blade Grips

The light red arrows point to the blade grip. The grip attaches the rotor blade to the rotor head, and includes a pitch change mechanism used to change angle of attack by feathering the blade (with the cyclic control). In the case of the R22, the grip has multiple bearings, and is filled with a fluid similar (identical?) to automatic transmission fluid.
Pitch Horn

The dark red arrow points to the left hand blade pitch horn. The pitch horn on the right blade is behind the head in this photograph can cannot be seen, but does exist. The purpose of the pitch horn is to give the feathering pitch change mechanism (cyclic/swashplate) a place to attach to the blade. By sticking out from the blade, the pitch horn works as a lever, decreasing the force it takes to change the angle of the blade. Note that it also has the effect of changing the location on the swashplate where the pitch mechanism attaches. Rather than attaching to the swashplate directly under the blade, it attaches to the swashplate almost 90 degrees earlier in rotation. This is how the control system corrects for the almost90 degree lag in rotor response due toGyroscopic Precession.
Pitch Link

The yellow arrow points to the pitch link, which connects the pitch horn to the swashplate. These length of these pitch links can be adjusted to set the angle of incidence of the blade during track and balance of the rotor system.

Rotating Star (Swashplate)

The green arrow points to the rotating portion of the swashplate, which attaches to the pitch links. Below that is the non-rotating part, which connects to the pitch control rods coming up from the cyclic/collective mixer.
Basic JetRanger (Bell 206) Head The design of the Bell 206 rotor head is not that different from that of the Robinson. Note that in this picture, there are no light blue arrows, because the 206 head does not include coning hinges. Instead, the rotor head is designed with a pre-cone angle to the blade retention system, and other coning forces are simply dealt with by bending of the blades (which must be built stronger to deal with the extra stress).

Blade Grips

The light red arrows point to the blade grips. The design is slightly different than the Robinson. The inside of the grips is filled with a light grease, rather than a fluid. Also, note on the right hand blade that there is a vertical bolt attaching the

blade to the grip. The blade can be set with some fixed lead or lag as part of the rotor system rigging, compared to the Robinson where the lead/lag position of the blade is fixed by the design of the rotor head, and can not be adjusted, even at the factory.
What is Teetering (Flapping) versus Feathering? On any rotor system, flapping occurs when the blade moves up and down. On a rigid rotor system, this occurs when the blade bends. On an articulated system, the blade flaps up and down around a flapping hinge. On a 2 bladed, semi-rigid teetering system, the blades flap in unison around the flapping hinge such as in these pictures of a Robinson R22:

Notice that the angle the airfoil makes with the horizon here does not change. Flapping changes the angle of attack not by pitching the airfoil up or down, but by changing the direction of the wind relative to the blade. For a more in-depth discussion see Relative Wind, Flapping and Angle of Attack. Compare this to the following picture which shows the blade being feathered by the pilot's controls via the swashplate:

In this picture, you can clearly see that the angle of the blade with respect to the horizon has changed, from a nose up angle on the left side, to a nose down angle on the right side. In this case, the swashplate has moved in response to either the cyclic, collective, or both, and has moved the pitch links up or down. Since the pitch links are connected to the blade via the pitch horn, the blade is forced to rotate around the blade grip bearing into a different angle of incidence.
How does the Rotor System Teeter? The rotor system teeters around the central hinge. The position of the blades is due to the balance between centrifugal force which is trying to hold the blades "straight out", versus lift which is trying to make them fold straight up. The balance of the forces will cause the blades to fly at some angle. If one blade starts to develop more lift, while the other blade starts to develop less lift, one blade will want to climb while the other will want to descend. The result will be that the rotor head will teeter, allowing one blade to go up while the other goes down.

It is important to understand that teetering happens "automatically", as a result of aerodynamic and centrifugal forces. The pilot does not command flapping with the control system.

How does (the R22) Control System Transmit Pitch to the Blades? There are many different mechanisms for transmitting cyclic and collective inputs to the main rotor system. The Robinson R22 and R44 mount the swashplate on a monoball. This allows the entire swashplate to slide up and down on the rotor mast (for collective inputs) and tilt (for cyclic inputs). These two pictures show how the swashplate slides up and down to transmit a collective pitch change:

You can see that the red arrow is pointing to the bottom of the swashplate in the left hand picture, but that in the right hand picture the entire swashplate has moved up the mast. Notice the effect that has on the pitch links: the yellow arrows show that in the right hand picture, the pitch link has moved up along with the swashplate (compare the top of the pitch link and the left hand coning hinge bolt in the two pictures). Since the entire swashplate has moved up without changing its tilt, the pitch links have all moved up a set amount, but will continue to move up and down during rotation in response to the tilt of the swashplate. In comparison, look at the following picture to see how cyclic input is transmitted to the blades:

Notice that the swashplate in the left hand photograph is basically level, while in the right hand photograph it has been tilted. The tilt will cause the pitch link to have to move up as it travels to the right hand side of the picture, and move back down as it travels to the left hand side of the picture. As it moves up and down the blade pitch will increase and decrease.
Fully articulated rotor system
Juan de la Cierva developed the fully articulating rotor for the autogyro. The basis of his design permitted successful helicopter development. In a fully articulated rotor system, each rotor blade is attached to the rotor hub through a series of hinges that let the blade move independently of the others. These rotor systems usually have three or more blades. The blades are allowed to flap, feather, and lead or lag independently of each other. The horizontal hinge, called the flapping hinge, allows the blade to move up and down. This movement is called flapping and is designed to compensate for dissymmetry of lift. The flapping hinge may be located at varying distances from the rotor hub, and there may be more than one hinge. The vertical hinge, called the lead-lag or drag hinge, allows the blade to move back and forth. This movement is called lead-lag, dragging, or hunting. Dampers are usually used to prevent excess back and forth movement around the drag hinge. The purpose of the drag hinge and dampers is to compensate for the acceleration and [13] deceleration caused by momentum conservation, and not by Coriolis effect. Later models have [why?][citation needed] switched from using traditional bearings to elastomeric bearings. A variation of the fully articulated system is the "soft-in-plane" rotor system. This type of rotor can be found on several aircraft produced by Bell Helicopter, such as the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. This system is similar to the fully articulated type in that each blade has the ability to lead/lag and hunt independent of the other blades. The difference between a fully articulated system and soft-in-plane system is that the soft-in-plane system utilizes a composite yoke. This yoke is attached to the mast and runs through the blade grips between the blades and the shear bearing inside the grip. This yoke does transfer some movement of one blade to another, usually opposing blades. While this is not fully articulated, the flight characteristics are very similar and maintenace time and cost are reduced.

Ceramaret manufactures high quality Rotors made out of High Purity Alumina (96%, 99,7% or 99,9%) and TZP Zirconia ceramics for high and low pressure injection and selection valves.

Aluminium Al

13

Al
Ga Periodic table magnesium aluminium silicon

Appearance

silvery gray metallic

Spectral lines of aluminium

General properties

Name, symbol,number

aluminium, Al, 13

Pronunciation

UK

/ljmnim/

AL-ew-MN-ee-m;

US

/ljumnm/

-LEW-mi-nm

Element category Group, period,block Standard atomic weight Electron configuration

post-transition metal 13, 3, p 26.9815386(13) [Ne] 3s2 3p1 2, 8, 3

History Prediction First isolation Named by Antoine Lavoisier[1] (1787) Friedrich Whler[1] (1827) Humphry Davy[1] (1807) Physical properties Phase Density(near r.t.) Liquid density atm.p. Melting point Boiling point Heat of fusion Heat of vaporization Molar heat capacity solid 2.70 gcm3 2.375 gcm3 933.47 K, 660.32 C, 1220.58 F 2792 K, 2519 C, 4566 F 10.71 kJmol1 294.0 kJmol1 24.200 Jmol1K1 Vapor pressure P (Pa) 1 10 100 1k 10 k 100 k 2790

at T (K) 1482 1632 1817 2054 2364

Atomic properties Oxidation states 3, 2[2], 1[3] (amphoteric oxide)

Electronegativity Ionization energies (more)

1.61 (Pauling scale) 1st: 577.5 kJmol1 2nd: 1816.7 kJmol1 3rd: 2744.8 kJmol1

Atomic radius Covalent radius Van der Waals radius

143 pm 1214 pm 184 pm Miscellanea

Crystal structure

face-centered cubic

Magnetic ordering Electrical resistivity Thermal conductivity Thermal expansion Speed of sound(thin rod) Young's modulus Shear modulus Bulk modulus Poisson ratio Mohs hardness Vickers hardness Brinell hardness CAS registry number

paramagnetic[4] (20 C) 28.2 nm 237 Wm1K1 (25 C) 23.1 mm1K1 (r.t.) (rolled) 5,000 ms1 70 GPa 26 GPa 76 GPa 0.35 2.75 167 MPa 245 MPa 7429-90-5 Most stable isotopes

Main article: Isotopes of aluminium iso

26

NA trace

half-life 7.1710 y
5

DM DE (MeV)
+

DP
26 26

Al

1.17 1.8086

Mg Mg -

27 27

Al 100%

Al is stable with 14 neutrons

Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystal (TZP)