Project: Purdue University

This project was started in 1995 by the AHS Student chapter at Purdue University. Jeff Decker and Santosh Kuruvilla designed and constructed a test stand for human powered helicopter rotors. Photos and a report are available on the chapter's website. There seems to have been no activity since 2001. If you have any information about this project, please contact me.

From the AHS Student Chapter website main page: Welcome to Purdue University's Chapter of the American Helicopter Society.  After a five year hiatus, we've updated our site with our current projects and members.  Have a look around and write us with questions, comments or ideas. 

Background: In the past three decades, enthusiasts all over the world have enjoyed prolific results within human powered flight.  The
Gossamer Albatross and Daedalus both made great advances for fix-wing aircraft, and riding on their success, attention soon
turned to rotorcraft.  The American Helicopter Society (AHS) introduced the Sikorsky Prize in 1980: $20,000 to the first group that can demonstrate controlled human powered vertical flight.  In 1989, California Polytechnic State University’s Da Vinci III demonstrated the Sikorsky Award was achievable, albeit distantly.  California Polytechnic State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Nihon University in Japan all put forth amazing contributions, though none capable of capturing the Sikorsky Prize.  Despite over twenty years of effort with no successful flight mandated by the Sikorsky Prize,
work continues on the idea with modest progress.

A small group of students at Purdue have been steadily working on the project since 1995, when Prof. William Crossley founded the Purdue Chapter of the AHS.  The club has remained small, and students have made modest advances toward the ultimate Human Powered Helicopter (HPH).  In 1996, a student wrote a Matlab code to predict the performance of a full-scale HPH rotor.  A few years after that, a 1:8 scale model rotor was built and tested.  However, the results from these first tests were inconclusive.  The testing equipment was just not up to par.  Then in the fall 2001, a second test stand was built; go the  Projects page for more information, including a final report."

From the webpage on the test stand project: "As of fall 2001, two students built a test stand to test the 1/8 scale model rotor built several years ago.  Spring 2002 will see the test stand used, and data collected for various collective pitch and Z/D's.  The testing will (hopefully) verifiy a computer code written to predict the power usage of a full scale human powered helicopter rotor. The test stand was built as a directed study class.  The basic idea is to be able to measure thrust and torque that the rotor produces.  This is done by supporting the motor, hub, and rotor assemble on three load cells, which will measure thrust.  This assembly in turn is supported by three flexures.  The flexures provide freedom of rotational movement, but the movement is restrained by a fourth load cell.  The distance from the center of the stand times the force on the load cell will equal the torque. The stand was also built to change the elevation in order to ground effect on the rotor."