Erosion from Motion: Reducing Wear and Tear on Rotary Blades

Competitive Projects

Up to $1.2M in phased development funding to propel technology forward

The Challenge

The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) are seeking innovative solutions that will enable rotary winged aircraft to operate for extended periods in a broad range of extremely harsh environmental conditions such as rain and sand storms with minimal erosion damage to the rotary wing blades.

What IDEaS Provides

Funding of up to $200,000 will be provided for innovative solutions to help advance this defence challenge over a performance period of up to 6 months. There is a potential opportunity for further funding of up to $1 million for a performance period of up to a year should the solution be found successful and promising by DND/CAF.

What Innovators Bring

Solutions that demonstrate the ability to protect against erosion of environmental factors for increased operational flexibility, have minimal requirements for down-time for touch-ups or repair between major maintenance periods, and have some degree of icephobicity to offer even more operational flexibility.


Results

WebID Project Title Innovator Amount Stage

Challenge

The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) are seeking innovative solutions that will enable rotary winged aircraft to operate for extended periods in a broad range of extremely harsh environmental conditions such as rain and sand storms with minimal erosion damage to the rotary wing blades.

Background and Context

The ability to fly in degraded visual environments (e.g., rain or sand storms) is operationally advantageous, but results in increased damage to the aircraft, especially erosion damage to the rotary wing blades. Each rotary wing blade has an integral leading edge erosion strip, which when damaged necessitates the replacement of the entire blade. Polymeric and tape coatings have been employed on the leading edge to extend the life of the blades in a dry sand environment. However, these coatings are intended for protection against incidental exposures such as during landing and takeoff, or light sandy environments, and require frequent touch-ups between flights, increasing the maintenance burden and reducing the availability of the aircraft. The durability of the protective coating is a key consideration since coatings failure results in increased rotor vibrations, impacting flight safety and often results in an aborted mission.

Essential Outcomes

There are three environmental factors of primary concern for erosion, and many climates have two or more environmental factors occurring concurrently. While it doesn’t directly contribute to erosion, the ability to withstand extreme temperatures is also a factor of concern. Solutions must be able to protect against erosion from one of these environmental factors:

  • Sand/Dust/Volcanic Ash
  • Rain
  • Frozen precipitation (Ice or snow)

Desired Outcomes

Proposed solutions should include capabilities such as, but not limited to, the following:

  • Have the ability to protect against erosion of two or all, of the environmental factors above for increased operational flexibility;
  • Have minimal requirements for down-time for touch-ups or repair between major maintenance periods;
  • Have some degree of icephobicity to offer even more operational flexibility.

Solutions may include, but are not limited to:

  • Add-on solutions for the rotary wing blades including coatings, appliqués, etc.
  • Integral solutions for the rotary wing blades, including erosion resistant materials or structures for portions of the rotary wing blades (i.e., integral leading edge erosion strip

Supplemental Information

For informational purposes only, DND may conduct sand erosion, rain erosion, adhesion, and/or electrolytic stability tests, on these solutions prepared on small coupons (on the order of 50mm x 50mm). As such, there is not a quantified minimum performance standard that the proposed solutions must meet.

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