Theory and Comparison with Tests of Two Full-Scale Proprotors

A nine degrees-of-freedom theoretical model has been developed for investigations of the dynamics of a proprotor operating in hight inflow axial flight on a cantilever wing. The theorty is described, and the results of the analysis are presented for two proprotor configurations: a gimballed, stiff-inplane rotor, and a hingeless, soft-inplane rotor. The influence of various elements of the theory is discussed, including the modeling used for the blade and wing aerodynamics and the influence of the rotor lag degree of freedom. The results from full-scale tests of these two proprotors are presented and compared with the theoretical results.