Design and application of an Electric Tail Rotor Drive Control (ETRDC) for helicopters with performance tests

With the development of electric helicopters’ motor technology and the widespread use of electric drive rotors, more aircraft use electric rotors to provide thrust and directional control. For a helicopter tail rotor, the wake of the main rotor influences the tail rotor’s inflow and wake. In the procedure of controlling, crosswind will also cause changes to the tail disk load. This paper describes requirements and design principles of an electric motor drive and variable pitch tail rotor system. A particular spoke-type architecture of the motor is designed, and the performance of blades is analyzed by the CFD method. The demand for simplicity of moving parts and strict constraints on the weight of a helicopter makes the design of electrical and mechanical components challenging. Different solutions have been investigated to propose an effective alternative to the mechanical actuation system. A test platform is constructed which can collect the dynamic response of the thrust control. The enhancement of the response speed due to an individual motor speed control and variable-pitch system is validated.