Hover Performance Improvement with Warp-Induced Spanwise Camber Variation

The role helicopters play in aviation has increased exponentially since the availability of the worlds first mass produced helicopter in 1942, the Sikorsky R-4. However, they are also plagued with significant design challenges which limit their operability to a smaller flight envelope compared to fixed wing aircraft. Morphing technologies for rotor blades provide a method of widening the range of operatibility effectively by essentially changing the operating aerodynamic load distribution experienced by the rotor to the specified optimal(or close to optimal) configuration corresponding to the flight condition.