Helicopter rotor primary control is conventionally carried out using a swashplate with pitch links. Eliminating the swashplate promises to reduce the helicopter's parasitic power in high speed forward flight, as well as may lead to a hydraulic-less vehicle. A Mach-scale swashplateless rotor is designed with integrated piezobender-actuated trailing edge flaps and systematically tested on the benchtop, in the vacuum chamber and on the hoverstand. The blade is nominally based on the UH-60 rotor with a hover tip Mach number of 0.64. The blade diameter is 66 inches requiring 2400 RPM for Mach scale simulation. The rotor hub is modified to reduce the blade fundamental torsional frequency to less than 2.0/rev by replacing the rigid pitch links with linear springs, which results in an increase of the blade pitching response to the trailing edge flaps. Piezoelectric multilayer benders provide the necessary bandwidth, stroke and stiffness to drive the flaps for primary control while fitting inside the blade profile and withstanding the high centrifugal forces.

 This work focuses on several key issues. A piezobender designed from a soft piezoelectric material, PZT-5K4, is constructed. The new material is used to construct multi-layer benders with increased stroke for the same stiffness relative to hard materials such as PZT-5H2. Each layer has a thickness of 10 mils. The soft material with gold electrodes requires a different bonding method than hard material with nickel electrodes. With this new bonding method, the measured stiffness matches precisely the predicted stiffness for a 12 layer bender with 1.26 inch length and 1.0 inch width with a stiffness of 1.04 lb/mil. The final in-blade bender has a length of 1.38 inches and 1.0 inch width with a stiffness of 0.325 lb/mil and stroke of 20.2 mils for an energy output of 66.3 lb-mil. The behavior of piezobenders under very high electric fields is investigated. High field means +18.9 kV/cm (limited by arcing in air) and -3.54kV/cm (limited by depoling). An undocumented phenomenon is found called bender relaxation where the benders lose over half of their initial DC stroke over time. While the bender stiffness is shown not to change with electric field, the DC stroke is significantly less than AC stroke. 

 A two-bladed Mach-scale rotor is constructed with each blade containing 2 flaps each actuated by a single piezobender. Each flap is 26.5% chord and 14% span for a total of 28% span centered at 75% of the blade radius. Flap motion of greater than 10 degrees half peak-peak is obtained for all 4 flaps at 900 RPM on the hoverstand. So, the flaps show promise for the Mach-scale rotor speed of 2400 RPM. A PID loop is implemented for closed loop control of  flap amplitude and mean position. 

 On the hoverstand at 900 RPM, the swashplateless concept is demonstrated. The linear springs used to lower the torsional frequency are shown to have minimum friction during rotation. 1/rev blade pitching of ±1 degree is achieved at a torsional frequency of 1.5/rev for each blade. At resonance, the blade pitching for each blade is greater than ±4 degrees. Primary control is demonstrated by measuring hub forces and moments. At resonance state, the flaps in conjunction with the blade pitching provide ±15 lbs of normal force at a mean lift of 15 lbs yielding ±100% lift authority. Significant hub forces and moments are produced as well.

 For a production swashplateless helicopter, it may be prudent to eliminate the pitch links by reducing the blade structural stiffness. A novel wire sensor system network is proposed in order to measure blade elastic flap bending, lead-lag bending and torsion. The theory for measuring blade twist is rigorously derived. A blade is constructed with the wire sensor network and validated on the benchtop for blade elastic bending and twist. 

 This work is a step forward in achieving a swashplateless rotor system. Not only would this reduce drag in high speed forward flight, but it would lead to a hydraulic-less rotorcraft. This would be a major step in vertical flight aviation.