DisruptiveLab Starts Testing Airbus’s Latest Helicopter Advances
by Gregory Polek and Charles Alcock
March 3, 2023 – 3:31 p.m
The maiden flight of Airbus Helicopters’ DisruptiveLab flight test demonstrator on January 13 was the latest milestone in the company’s decades-long effort to accelerate improvements in rotorcraft performance and fuel efficiency. Now, as Airbus tests a range of advances primarily in the area of sustainability, Airbus expects the DisruptiveLab to deliver technology that will halve carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, thanks largely to a planned fully parallel hybrid propulsion system that will eliminate battery charging during the day flight allows.
Other advances include a more compact rotor head for reduced drag, improved energy efficiency and perceived noise made possible by more efficient integration with its three blades. What Tomasz Krysinski, Director of Research and Innovation at Airbus Helicopters, called dynamic optimization of the rotors, including a new damper concept and blades with thinner tips, accounts for 15 percent of the 50 percent CO2 reduction target for the DisruptiveLab. Speaking to AIN ahead of Heli-Expo, Krysinksi called the feature “really crucial because the future is really about reducing the energy needed for flight.
“The optimization of the rotor blade is really fundamental to our technology,” he explained. “We’ve done 40 wind tunnel campaigns to reduce drag and the result is already 15 percent of the energy you don’t need for flight. I always say the best energy to fly is energy we don’t need.”
The clean-sheet testbed aircraft now flies every week, with the DisruptiveLab team reviewing data from each flight and then agreeing on goals for the next mission. During a February 14 visit to the company’s headquarters in Marignane, southern France, AIN witnessed its fifth weekly flight achieving maximum sustained power, confirming Krysinski’s team’s expectations that a five-kilogram weight reduction would equate to a one-kilowatt weight reduction in performance requirements.
The drag reduction that Airbus hopes to achieve with the new airframe and rotor architecture is an integral part of this equation. A new landing gear design with only three connection points to the fuselage is another factor in reducing drag and ground resonance.
Another 25 percent of the fuel economy reduction is expected to come from a new thermodynamic cycle in the powertrain and the final 10 percent from a planned switch to a new hybrid-electric option that has yet to be fully defined, Krysinksi noted. Airbus is aiming to demonstrate a hybrid system that will allow the simultaneous or separate use of an as yet unspecified electric motor and the turbine engine, allowing the pilot to switch between the power sources depending on what is most efficient at a given stage of the flight. Beyond this technology, the manufacturer is striving to unlock the potential for hydrogen propulsion for rotorcraft.
According to Krysinksi, the technology developed in the DisruptiveLab is fully scalable and could be applied to helicopters of different sizes. He said his team is already taking internal requests from various Airbus Helicopter programs to apply these innovations and is now focusing on how to minimize any recurring costs to do so.
Airbus aims to complete the “hybridization” of the DisruptiveLab aircraft in 2024, using a concept Krysinski says is similar to that used for Toyota’s Prius car. Flight testing of new simplified fly-by-wire systems is scheduled to begin in about three months.
The latest of Airbus Helicopters’ three current technology demonstrators, the DisruptiveLab complements the company’s FlightLab demonstrator, which uses an existing H130 platform and whose primary mission is to improve the autonomy and safety of ‘technobricks’.
Flight testing of the FlightLab began in April 2021, when Airbus used the demonstrator to measure helicopter sound levels in urban areas and, in particular, to study how buildings might affect people’s perceptions. Tests have shown that buildings play an important role in masking or amplifying sound levels. Airbus called the studies instrumental for sound modeling and regulation, particularly for advanced air mobility initiatives. Airbus also used FlightLab to evaluate the Rotor Strike Alerting System (RSAS), which alerts crews to the impending threat of a collision with the main and tail rotors.
Last year’s trials included testing an image recognition system using cameras to enable low-altitude navigation, the operability of a dedicated health and usage monitoring system (HUMS) for light helicopters, and an engine backup system that will provide emergency power in the US in case of turbine failure. Testing at FlightLab also evaluated a new ergonomic design of intuitive flight controls for pilots, intended to further reduce pilot workload in conventional helicopters and other VTOL “formula” such as UAM.