Feasibility study of the installation of an additional "over lift" wing on the ch47 Chinook for cruise performance improvement through the lift-compound approach

The tandem rotor configuration is particularly convenient for the lift-compound approach in helicopters. In fact, the additional wing is positioned between the two rotors in an area that is marginally interested by the airflow in vertical flight. On the contrary, in horizontal flight, the airflow accelerated by the frontal rotor directly invest the wing improving its lift. A very thin wing with a short chord and a relatively large span can be manufactured with the same technology of the rotor blades. If this wing is fixed without control surfaces, the additional weight can be extremely limited. A concaveconvex high lift airfoil can be used. This airfoil is relatively stiff due to the large bending moment of inertia. A skin stressed structure can be used for the additional wing to obtain also a large torsional stiffness. This lightweight wing can be installed on the helicopter when required and it can be optimized to a defined flight condition. In our case the optimization was performed for cruise. With a very limited weight increment and with a lift penalty within the simulation approximations, the cruise fuel consumption can be halved. The result is impressive for ferrying and long range passenger transport operations, where load capacity can be fully exploited only by increasing the fuel load. In this case a helicopter like the Chinook can perform long range missions with a significant increase in operational capability.