How does a helicopter work? | Who invented helicopters?

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Helicopters
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by Chris Woodford. Last updated: July 13, 2016.

Helicopters are highly maneuverable aircraft that fly not by forcing air over a pair of fixed
wings, like an airplane, but by spinning a rotor blade at high speed. Leonardo da Vinci (14521519)

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is generally credited with inventing the helicopter, but the first practical design was developed
only in the 1930s by Russian-born Igor Sikorsky (18891972). Today, typical uses for helicopters
include military transportation and air-sea rescue.
Photo: The US Navy's largest helicopter: the CH53-E Sikorsky Super Stallion. Each one costs
almost $25 million! Picture by Joshua Adam Nuzzo courtesy of US Navy.

How does a helicopter stay in the air?

Rotor blades work like spinning wings. Helicopters fly upward against the force of gravity by
using their rotors to throw air down beneath them. Like the wings of an airplane, each blade in a
helicopter's rotor is an airfoil (aerofoil): a wing with a curved top and a straight bottom. As the
blade spins around, it forces air over its curved upper surface and then throws it down behind it
toward the ground, producing an upward force called lift. The pitch of the blades (the angle
they make to the incoming airflow) controls the amount of lift. During takeoff, the pilot
increases the pitch with a control called the collective pitch stick. The lift produced is greater
than the helicopter's weight and this makes the helicopter rise upward. If the lift exactly equals
the weight, the helicopter hovers. If the weight is greater than the lift, the helicopter descends
to Earth.

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Photo: Right: Mighty rotors: You can see just how big and heavy a helicopter's rotors are in this
picture. It takes four US marines to hold this rotor in place while it's being reattached after
maintenance. Notice the curved front edge of the rotor blade that cuts like an airfoil as it spins
around. Picture by Jeremy L. Grisham courtesy of US Navy.
Normally the lift produced by the rotor aims straight upward, but the pilot can tilt the rotor
blades with a device called the cyclic pitch control to make the helicopter fly in a particular
direction. Although most of the lift force still points upward, some of it now also points to
the front, back, left, or right, tilting the entire helicopter and pushing it in that direction.
The pilot's movements are transmitted from the cockpit to the rotor blades by two disks called
the upper and lower swash plates. The lower swash plate does not rotate, but can tilt or move
up and down. The upper swash plate spins with the rotors on ball bearings on top of the lower
swash plate. When the pilot pushes the controls, the lower swash plate nudges the upper swash
plate, and the blades are tilted in turn by a system of control rods.
Artwork: How a helicopter steers: Top drawing: The collective pitch control changes the angle
(or pitch) of each of the rotor blades by the same amount at the same time (green arrows)in
other words, collectively. If the blades make a steeper angle, they generate more lift so the
entire craft moves straight upward (orange arrow). Bottom drawing: The cyclic pitch control
changes the angle of selective rotor blades as they spin, so (in this case) whichever blade is on
the left always produces slightly more lift, while the opposite blade (shown here on the right)
always produces slightly less lift. That means more lift is produced on the left side of the
helicopter, so the overall lift (orange arrow) is tilted to the right, steering the entire
helicopter in that direction.

How helicopter rotors work

Everyone knows a helicopter's rotors rotate (that's why they're called rotors). But the really
clever thing about them is that the blades can swivel back and forth as they turn aroundand

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that requires some amazingly intricate machinery.

It's easy to mimic a helicopter with your arms and your body's hidden structure makes the
movements seem easy. Stand up with your arms outstretched horizontally. Rotate your whole
body slowly on the spot. As you're turning around, swivel your arms at the shoulders. That's
roughly what a helicopter does with its blades, except that it does it about 3-4 times each
second as the blades are spinning round! Here are the main bits that make it work:

1. The blades are shaped like airfoils (airplane wings with a curved profile) so they generate
lift as they spin.
2. Each blade can swivel as it spins.
3. Vertical rods push the blades up and down, making them swivel as they rotate.
4. A central axle connected to the engine makes the entire blade assembly rotate.
5. The rotor hub cap (above the rotors) helps to reduce aerodynamic drag.
6. There are two turbo-shaft jet engines, one on either side of the rotors. If one engine fails,
there should still be enough power from the other engine to land the helicopter safely.
Photo: Top: A US Navy engineer checks the rotor assembly on a Seahawk helicopter. Picture by
Kathaleen A. Knowles courtesy of US Navy with annotations by Explain that Stuff. Bottom: An
engineer repairs the amazingly intricate and complex rotor mechanism of a Seahawk, viewed here
from directly above. The engines are the two open cones on either side. You can also see two of
the rotor blades folded back along the fuselage (and pointing upward in this picture), which
means the Seahawk can be parked on aircraft carriers in much less space. Photo by Oliver Cole
courtesy of US Navy.

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How Sikorsky designed the modern helicopter rotor

All this sounds ingeniousand it is! The person who made it possible was brilliant Russian-born
inventor Igor Sikorsky. Here are two of his original helicopter design drawings, taken from the
patent for a Direct Lift Aircraft (helicopter) he filed in June 1931:

Notice how similar the mechanism is to what we find on a modern helicopter? The patent is
extremely detailed and quite complex (you can check it out for yourself), so I've removed most
of the labels and numbers and highlighted just a few key features:
1. There's an aileron at the end of each rotor blade, shown in orange.
2. The ailerons can be tilted (as they rotate) by the blue rods.
3. There are two main rotor blades (which Sikorsky referred to collectively as the "lift

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propeller."
4. The entire rotor blades can swivel on the green rods and can also be tilted as they rotate.
5. The main rotor blade rotates around a central hub (yellow) with an engine beneath it.
6. A single engine powers both the main rotor blade and the tail rotor. One of Sikorsky's key
innovations was to produce a helicopter that needed only one main rotor blade, with a tail
rotor to balance it, for reasons discussed below. As Sikorsky noted in his patent, having
only one rotor means a helicopter is "light in weight, simple to construct, and cheap to
produce"three powerful advantages over earlier designs!
Artwork: Igor Sikorsky's original patent drawings, with colors and annotations added for
clarity. From US Patent #1,994,488: Direct Lift Aircraft, courtesy of US Patent and Trademark
Office.

Why do helicopters need a tail rotor?

According to the laws of motion, any force (or action) produces an equal force (or reaction) in
the opposite direction. This means the torque (rotating force) produced by a helicopter's blades
tends to turn the fuselage (the main helicopter body) in the opposite direction. All helicopters
have either a second propeller or another device to counteract the torque of the main blade. In
most helicopters, a tail rotor balances the torque by pushing in the opposite direction to the
main rotor. Some helicopters have two rotors mounted on the same shaft, which turn in
opposite directions (counter-rotating) to cancel the torque. Others (notably the large military
Chinook helicopters) have a rotor at the front and a rotor at the back and cancel the torque by
turning in opposite directions. Tail rotors solve one problem but can cause others. Noisy and
dangerous to passengers, the tail rotor of a helicopter is also highly susceptible to damage
from passing birds or debris. This is a big problem, because a helicopter with a damaged tail rotor
is dangerously uncontrollable. NOTAR helicopters have a giant fan inside the fuselage that sucks
in air just behind the cockpit and blows it out again through a side hole near the tail. This
produces the same sideways force as a tail rotor, but is quieter and safer.
Photo: The tail rotor of a Seahawk helicopter. The tail rotor is driven by a drive shaft running
back from the main engines, parallel to the body of the helicopter. If you look closely, you'll see
that the blades of the rotor can be tilted by the pilot as they spin around, which generates more
or less pushing force and gives the helicopter the ability to rotate on the spot as it hovers.
Picture by James R. Evans courtesy of US Navy.

Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing (V/STOL) aircraft

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Airplanes fly fast but need super-long runways for taking off and landing. Helicopters can take
off and land almost anywhere, but their complex and relatively clumsy rotor systems mean they
can travel at only a fraction of a plane's speed. If you want the best of both worldshigh speed
and land-anywhere versatilityyou need a V/STOL aircraft: one that's capable of "vertical/short
takeoff and landing," such as the famous Harrier jump jet or the tilt-rotor Osprey.
Photo: The Harrierthe most famous V/STOL aircraft of them all. This one is an AV-8B II,
landing vertically on the deck of a relatively small US Marine Corps amphibious assault ship.
Photo by Angel Roman-Otero courtesy of US Navy.

How can planes take off vertically?

Airplanes have to travel at high speeds to produce enough lift for takeoff, but because they are
immensely heavy and often carry substantial cargoes, they can accelerate only very slowly. A
typical runway for a large airliner such as a Boeing 747 is around 2 miles (3 km) long, simply
because the plane has to travel this far before it has picked up enough speed to get off the
ground.

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Long runways may be fine for passenger aircraft, but military fighters need to take off in much
more confined spaces (for example, from the deck of an aircraft carrier). Vertical/Short Takeoff
and Landing (V/STOL) aircraft solve this problem by having jet engines whose nozzles can be
swiveled in different directions. During takeoff and landing, the jets point straight downward
so the plane can rise or fall on the spot or hover like a helicopter. (Some V/STOL aircraft can
even point their nozzles forward so they can fly backward!) Once the plane is airborne, the
nozzles swivel so they're pointing backward and the plane shoots forward like a conventional
airplane.
Photo: A Harrier can hover because, unlike a traditional jet engine, it has four extra nozzles on
the side that can swivel around to direct the engine's exhaust gases straight downward. Picture
by Staci Bitzer courtesy of US Navy.
The best known plane of this sort is the Harrier "jump-jet" extensively used by the UK Royal Navy
and the US Marine Corps. The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) currently being developed by Boeing and
Lockheed for the US military will also be a VTOL aircraft. The US Airforce Osprey plane works in
a similar way, but has tilting propellers instead of jet engines. To land vertically, like a
helicopter, it tilts the propellers upward. To fly horizontally, it points them forward.

Tilt-rotor aircraft
Tilt-rotor aircraft combine the maneuverability of a helicopter with the speed, range, and
economy of a small airplane. Like an airplane, they have wings and propellers. But the propellers
can be rotated to point upward, enabling the airplane to take off and land vertically in a
confined space. Once the craft is airborne, the propellers can be turned back so it can fly along
like a conventional airplane. Bell Boeing's V-22 Osprey is an example of a tilt-rotor craft like
this. Ospreys can have their rotors angled forward to fly like planes, pointed upward to hover
like helicopters, or folded up for easy storage on aircraft carriers:

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Photos (left to right) by Andy M. Kin, Oscar Espinoza, and Zachary L. Borden, all courtesy of US
Navy.
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Find out more

On this website
Airplanes
Jet engines

On other websites
Sikorksy Archives: A detailed archive devoted to the Russian-born helicopter pioneer.
Igor Sikorksy: A basic Wikipedia biography.
Helicopter Flying Handbook: The FAA's fully illustrated, official guide to helicopters and
how to fly them.

Books
Technicalfor older readers
Principles of Helicopter Flight by Walter J. Wagtendonk. Aviation Supplies & Academics,
2006. A detailed introduction to how helicopters work and how to fly them, written by a
retired New Zealand flight instructor.
Learning to Fly Helicopters by R. Randall Padfield. McGraw-Hill Professional, 1992. A pilot's
manual, but also a great technical guide to exactly how helicopters work (and why they
stay in the sky).
Historicalfor older readers
Helicopters: An Illustrated History of their Impact by Stanley S. McGowen. ABC-CLIO,
2005. A detailed history of helicopters, starting with Leonardo and ending with tilt-rotor
and NOTAR copters. Quite text-heavy, though with plenty of facts and specifications of
important craft.
The Sikorsky Legacy by Sergei I. Sikorsky. Arcadia Publishing, 2007. A mainly pictorial history
of Igor Sikorsky's contribution to helicopter flight by his son, with many photos from the
company archives.
For younger readers
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Helicopters by Mark Dartford. Lerner Publications, 2003. A basic 48-page introduction for
ages 810, covering the history of helicopters, a little of the science, and how helicopters
are used in different ways.
Air and Space Travel by Chris Woodford. Facts on File, 2004. One of my own books, this is
a longer (96-page) guide to the history of human flight, from gliders and balloons through
planes and helicopters to space rockets. Suitable for ages 912.
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