Tilt Rotor & Tilt Duct

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EvFlyeruk

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Hello All,

I saw a thread the other day regarding http://www.falxair.com and did some digging around due to a concept tilt wing platform they had an image of, I have also seen a rendering they have done of a tilt duct design based on the DOAK 16.

My question is, what are the advantages/disadvantages of the tilt wing over a tilt duct?

[images missing — site no longer exists]
 
I believe the whole mechanical system for a tilt-wing is a lot heavier and harder to maintain than for a tilt-duct.

The DOAK 16 was a successful program and a sound design, and I never understood why it saw no further development.

The way that recent aviation news is full of flying platforms a la Hiller VZ-1 or Piasecky VZ-8 (not to mention the Solotrek which also duplicates a 1950s design) kind of shows that it must have been more of a political decision than a real flaw in conception.
 
If the mechanical system of a tilt wing is much heavier, I don't know for sure.
Although the additional mass of the wing has to be moved , there principally is
just one hinge, the one between wing and fuselage, against two in the tilt prop/
tilt duct. And the inevitable cross connection between the engines may (!) be
easier to design and may be lighter.
Aerodynamically a tilt wing should have advantages in hover performance compared
to a tilt prop/tilt duct, where the wing is exposed to the downwash of the prop/rotor.
(the same problem, as with many compound helis) and theoretically the transition should
be easier with a tilt wing, as the wing is better aligned to the flight path and can add
more lift then.
Tilt ducts, of course often tend to be a kind of a mixture, as the duct doubles as ring wing
in flight and the area of the fixed wing is relatively small.
 
This is the image they had on the front page of Popular Science in Sept 08...

[images missing — site no longer exists]
 
I must confess a VAST amount of skepticism about their product. For one thing look at the size of the cockpit/passenger space and aks where all the various equipment is going to fit in the rest of the hull. Also, their website is very sparse on details of any concrete nature.
It looks great and I wish them luck, don't get me wrong, but I don't see much fire under the smoke.
 
Charles Gray said:
I must confess a VAST amount of skepticism about their product. For one thing look at the size of the cockpit/passenger space and aks where all the various equipment is going to fit in the rest of the hull. Also, their website is very sparse on details of any concrete nature.
It looks great and I wish them luck, don't get me wrong, but I don't see much fire under the smoke.
Click to expand...

I have to agree - for this to be a truly useful platform (with adequate power/endurance) using hybrid electric aircraft propulsion, they must have come up with a significant breakthrough in power source etc. IF so, they could probably make a fortune from the car companies rather than focussing on aircraft.

Regards,

Greg
 
I wonder if there would be any advantage to having a tilt wing aircraft with ducts for propulsion? You could mount the engines themselves in the upper fuselage rather than on the wing tips. In a twin engine configuration, one could have the engines running to a central gearbox then crossducted to the ducts. I'm not sure if this would be lighter or less complex. You would still have the advantage of extra lift from the ducts but a possible downside might be higher downwash than with a tilt wing / rotor.
 
This otherwise interested topic is typical of what happens when pictures are linked to instead of saved locally and then attached to the message. None of the images provided in this topic can be found because the source website no longer exists...

Please always make a point of attaching the images, even if you also want to link them within the frame of the text area. This way they can live on and be of help to all those who will visit the page in the future!
 

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