Online military website The War Zone reported today that the U.S. Marines are exploring possible successors to the MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor. The program is advanced enough to have an acronym – the Next Generation Assault Support (NGAS) initiative. Originally planned to continue in service into the 2060s, the troubled Osprey program has faced growing scrutiny, including a three-month grounding last year after a fatal crash.
Vertical Flight Society’s Open forum has been having discussions about the V-22 matters for quite a time.
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Experts were looking at a suggested solution to save the Osprey project by an extremely simple way – by an upgrade of just the rotor blades.
The theory is based on the assumption that all problems (including the mystery failures of various mechanical parts) are linked to the same root cause. Which is the very high (too high) degree of blade stall experienced by the rotors at each vertical takeoff and landing, and at hover. As a consequence - during stall - extremely high vibrations reach the whole aircraft mechanically damaging all parts.
Application of adaptive blades can help to avoid this stall, and help maintaining optimal AOA.