CV-22 Aircraft Presentation Paper Alex Resnick Contemporary Issues in Aerospace Engineering

The CV-22 was designed in the late 90s for a long range infiltration platform for special operation forces. It has 2 Rolls Royce AE1107C turbo shaft engines capable of producing more than 6,200 horsepower per engine and one 38 diameter rotor per engine. The CV-22 has a cruising speed of 227 miles per hour and a max ceiling of 25,000 feet. This aircraft has a max vertical takeoff weight of 53,000lbs and a max rolling takeoff weight of 61,000lbs. The CV-22 can carry over 10,000lbs of cargo with 4 crew members over 500 nautical miles. However as amazing as this aircraft is, there have been many issues with the design and performance. One major issue is the lack of an autorotation feature for the propellers. Moreover the aircraft is easily susceptible to wake and tip vortices as well as entering a vortex ring state. Also, due to the size of the propellers and power of the engineers, the CV-22 produces extremely high downwash velocity and large vibratory loads. At the time of the first presentations, there was only slight knowledge of some of these design issues that the CV-22 is susceptible to, while now there is much greater understanding. One of the biggest issues is the amount/power of the downwash produced. It is so great that if CV-22s fly to close together their prop wash will interfere with each other and can cause more lift in one rotor than the other. This can cause snap roll which leading to a crash. Moreover due to the boxy fuselage, in high winds the aircraft will want to weathervane and turn and requires 80% more power just to hover and if the power is not available then it will crash. Along the same lines the CV-22s susceptibility to wake and tip vortices as well as pilot induced oscillation stems from the design of the wing and rotors. There have been several cases where the aircraft has started to roll automatically due to flying in close proximity to another aircraft, or even in the general area of where another aircraft had been and remnants of the vortices still existed. This is a major issue as one of the primary functions is landing troops which is usually done with many aircraft simultaneously. Furthermore, Vortex ring state is a flight condition in rotorcraft that establishes as fluctuations in the thrust produced by the rotor without any flight controls inputs. This usually only happens at low speed and in descending flight, during aggressive maneuvering, like in combat, or in unusual wind conditions. Unlike conventional helicopters, these thrust fluctuations are particularly problematic for CV-22 because of how the rotors are side by side, which responds to these fluctuations by creating a rolling moment. In attempting to compensate for these rolling moments, the flight control system of CV-22 can reach a point at which the pilot no longer has any control authority and can lead to a crash and death. This aircraft has been in the design and testing phase for years and though it is currently in use, there are still so many design issues with this aircraft. There seems to be inherent issues with attempting to design a stable tilt-rotor aircraft. This is due especially to the size of the rotors and the power required for such a small aircraft. One way that might make this a better aircraft would be to replace the turbo prop with a turbo jet. This might reduce the susceptibility to vortices and vortex ring state. This could make the aircraft more compact than having two 38 foot diameter propellers. Furthermore, another thing that could improve the performance of the CV-22 is the creation of an autorotation feature. This would allow the pilots to be able to concentrate more on controlling the aircraft than worrying about how much they have rotated the rotors, which when done manually, control can be lost and can cause pilot induced oscillation and crash. Overall this aircraft has a lot of things that need to be further redesigned in order to make it a viable and safe aircraft of the future, and if not, should be completely benched, until such time that the technology exists to create a safe tiltrotor or tilt-jet aircraft.