Rotorcraft

A rotorcraft or rotary-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air flying machine that uses lift generated by wings, called rotary wings or rotor blades, that revolve around a mast. Several rotor blades mounted on a single mast are referred to as a rotor. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) defines a rotorcraft as "supported in flight by the reactions of the air on one or more rotors". Rotorcraft generally include those aircraft where one or more rotors are required to provide lift throughout the entire flight, such as helicopters, cyclocopters, autogyros, and gyrodynes. Compound rotorcraft may also include additional thrust engines or propellers and static lifting surfaces.

A helicopter is a rotorcraft whose rotors are driven by the engine(s) throughout the flight to allow the helicopter to take off vertically, hover, fly forwards, backwards and laterally, as well as to land vertically. Helicopters have several different configurations of one or more main rotors.

Helicopters with a single shaft-driven main lift rotor require some sort of antitorque device such as a tail rotor, fantail, or NOTAR, except some rare examples of helicopters using tip jet propulsion, which generates almost no torque.

A cyclocopter is a rotorcraft whose rotors are also driven by the engine throughout the flight, but the blades rotate about the horizontal axis while being parallel to it. They are being developed in a number of countries in order to replace the helicopters, which have a number of very serious shortcomings such as low efficiency in forward flight, low speed, very high noise and vibration levels, limited flight range, and low altitude ceiling. At the present time flying model prototypes have been built in China, US, S. Korea and Austria.

An autogyro (sometimes called gyrocopter, gyroplane, or rotaplane) utilizes an unpowered rotor, driven by aerodynamic forces in a state of autorotation to develop lift, and an engine-powered propeller, similar to that of a fixed-wing aircraft, to provide thrust. While similar to a helicopter rotor in appearance, the autogyro's rotor must have air flowing up and through the rotor disk in order to generate rotation. Early autogyros resembled the fixed-wing aircraft of the day, with wings and a front-mounted engine and propeller in a tractor configuration to pull the aircraft through the air. Late-model autogyros feature a rear-mounted engine and propeller in a pusher configuration.

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