Tiltrotor

With tiltrotor (including tilt rotor ) are aircraft propeller drives referred to in which the propulsion pods can be pivoted about the horizontal axis to change the direction of thrust.

They allow in vertical position vertical takeoffs and landings. To transition to forward flight, the rotors are slowly swiveled horizontally and then produces an increasing rate of lift of the wings - so one speaks also of convertible aircraft. The transition from hover to horizontal flight in English is called Transition.

Two variants can be distinguished:

• Tilt rotor (English tiltrotor ), wherein the rotor blades cyclically adjusted (see the swash plate ), and thus the lateral movement is controlled in hover flight. The construction of the tiltrotors (French Convertible - German as " changeable " ) to go back to a developed from 1902 invention of the French-Swiss brothers Henri and Armand Dufaux, which they patented on 24 February 1904 and on April 14, 1905 for the first time publicly have demonstrated.

• Tilt- propeller (English Tiltprop ) with propellers can be in which only the angle of attack (English Pitch) adjusted; Hovering is then maneuvered through additional nozzles and propellers, possibly also used the Quadrocopter control at four-engined designs.

Closely related to this design are the Kippflügelflugzeuge where not only the engines, but the entire wing is tilted so that there are less air turbulence.

Tiltrotor aircraft

As of 2012, only two -engined machines in use or in flight testing, the V-22 Osprey and the AW609 are. In the past, however, was also successfully conducted research with four-engined copies, such as the Bell X- 22nd