Bell reveals FCX-001 future helicopter concept | IHS Jane's 360

The FCX-001 concept and roadmap is one that will have been developed and mapped by the company's Xworx advanced research division.

Although FCX-001 appears to be currently chiefly geared towards the commercial sector, a number of the technologies being developed will no doubt find their way onto military platforms.

Chief among these is likely to be the morphing rotor technology, which Bell has helped develop under the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Mission Adaptive Rotor (MAR) programme that was launched in 2009 and ran through to 2014.

MAR sought to develop and demonstrate 'on-the-fly' morphing rotor technology, which involves physically changing the shape of the rotor blade through flaps, slats, and other mechanical devices.

Held over three different phases that included contributions from Bell, Boeing, Sikorsky, and Bell-Boeing (tiltrotor flight), the effort to develop a 'shape-shifting' rotor blade to increase rotorcraft speed set out specific performance goals that included a 30% increase in useful payload fraction; a 40% increase in range performance; a 50% reduction in rotor acoustic detection range; and a 90% reduction of rotor-induced vibration.

The effort represented the latest evolution in helicopter rotor-blade design from straight rectangular blades, to tapered blades with shaped tips, through to the morphing blades of MAR, with the goal of breaking through the 'dissymmetry-of-lift' phenomena that currently limits helicopter speeds to below 200 kt.

If this technology can be reliably demonstrated on board a concept such as the FCX-001, it could revolutionise high-speed helicopter flight and would be of particular interest to military customers who seek the flexibility of the helicopter with the speed of an aircraft.