05 May 2008

(Not So) "Good Vibrations"

Flying things vibrate.
Folks that fly twin engine airplanes know the drill...
Every now and then you have to tweak your power settings to keep the engines singing from the same page.
But helicopters are absolutely the worst!

Engine(s), main rotor(s), transmission(s), drive shaft(s), tail rotor... all vibrate at their own frequency and all need to be harmonizing.
Things that vibrate affect other things, sometimes detrimentally.
I found this video interesting and topical:


2 comments:

cary said...

Now, if there was only some way to get the self-harmonizing to happen in a helicopter, then your job wouldn't be nearly as tough, eh?

Very cool video.

Anonymous said...

Adler described this phenomena in a 1940's paper entitled Injection Locking in Mechanical Oscillators or something close to that. Thanks for posting the link!
Jon Ladd