Vibrations, Not so Bad For Helicopters After All!

"When energy goes good..." Even though it doesn't sound right, that's exactly what Mid� Technology has succeeded in doing, converting pesky helicopter vibrations into electrical energy to track its rotor and make dynamic balance adjustments while in midflight, a procedure which usually takes place only on the ground and requires non-automated systems.

Most machines created by humans are highly inefficient into converting fuel to another form of energy, such as electricity, for example. An electric generator using a petrol engine to power it would be only 20 percent efficient, the rest of the energy being lost in the surrounding medium, through heat. Helicopters are not different, but on top of the loss of energy through heat, they also suffer from their design, which converts part of the energy extracted from fuel into bad vibrations.

As you can see, manual adjustments of rotor tracking and balance can result in possible limitations of helicopter flight time, but Mid� Technologies argues that, by exploiting the vibrations produced by helicopters, similar future adjustments could be done automatically. The technology pioneered by Mid� is called Volture, and makes the use of piezoelectric materials to convert part of the resultant vibrations into electrical energy.

Piezoelectric materials have the ability of converting mechanical oscillations directly in electric energy and vice versa, electrical energy into mechanical oscillations. They can be found throughout nature, one of the most common being the quartz, an alotrop of silicium. This way, wireless energy can be generated, stored and used in automatic systems.

Previously, the Volture technology was demonstrated and incorporated on freight trains as part of the braking system, to monitor whether or not the brakes are applied while setting the train on motion. These are just two examples of possible applications for the Volture technology, but the list can go on and on for ever, and can be incorporated into any type of machine producing excessive vibrations, as sensors or actuators.