Cyclogyro CR-42. the Powerhouse of Tomorrow. First Demonstration Flight.

The power plant of tomorrow

For sev­er­al years, the Aus­tri­an com­pa­ny CycloTech has been work­ing on the Cyclo­gy­ro, a new type of engine that the devel­op­ers say deliv­ers high rota­tion­al speeds, enough thrust for use in air, and an effi­cient ener­gy bal­ance. The com­pa­ny promised to demon­strate the first flight of an air­craft built on this kind of pow­er plant by the end of 2020, but for rea­sons known to all, this could not be real­ized. The oth­er day they again declared them­selves through a video where they final­ly showed the first advan­tages of the new type of motors Cyclo­gy­ro CR-42. And look­ing ahead, we note that this is an incred­i­ble sight!

Key Features

• Com­pact design
• Pre­cise take­off and land­ing
• 360-degree thrust vec­tor­ing sys­tem com­pen­sat­ing for gusts of wind
• Sta­ble tran­si­tion from hov­er mode to flight mode
• Effi­cient lev­el flight mode
• It can be used as the main pow­er plant, or as an addi­tion­al one, cou­pled with the main one.

Is the technology new?

In fact, the tech­nol­o­gy used by CycloTech was invent­ed back in 1926 by Ernst Schnei­der. Then the inven­tor con­sid­ered this type of motor as a thruster “Voith Schnei­der” to revive ships that require maneu­ver­abil­i­ty and pre­ci­sion, for exam­ple when tow­ing in port areas.

How it works?

The prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion of such a motor is sim­i­lar to how the pow­er plant of a heli­copter works, the blades of which, by chang­ing the angle of incli­na­tion, allow the air­craft to change the direc­tion of ascent. At the heart of the Cyclo­gy­ro motor is a mechan­i­cal type clutch imple­ment­ed by means of coils con­nect­ed by a cen­tral hub, allow­ing each blade to be tilt­ed direct­ly dur­ing their rota­tion, there­by chang­ing the strength and direc­tion of thrust. The hall­mark of this mech­a­nism is the abil­i­ty to change the angles of the blades incred­i­bly quick­ly, which makes this type of pow­er plant much more effi­cient than oth­er types cur­rent­ly used in var­i­ous ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft.

Visu­al­ly about the device and the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion from the devel­op­er:

Cyclogyro CR-42

The pro­to­type that 15 CycloTech engi­neers are work­ing on is a 420mm car­bon fiber cylin­der, 350mm in diam­e­ter, with five car­bon fiber blades that deliv­ers max­i­mum thrust of 247H at 3,100rpm. Elec­tric­i­ty is used as an ener­gy source, but hybrid sys­tems can also be used if nec­es­sary.

Application

CycloTech plans to offer its engines to air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers of all sizes, from small inspec­tion and sur­veil­lance devices to manned vehi­cles for emer­gency trans­port and urban mobil­i­ty. Cyclo­gy­ro can be used on its own to pro­vide con­trolled flight, or installed in addi­tion to exist­ing sys­tems to achieve greater maneu­ver­ing accu­ra­cy.

In par­tic­u­lar, the devel­op­er pro­pos­es the imple­men­ta­tion of a 4‑seater air taxi, built on four Cyclo­gy­ro engines, devel­op­ing a total pow­er of up to 2,226 hp. at 1600 rpm. The air vehi­cle is pow­ered by a bat­tery pack with a den­si­ty of 230 W / kg, weigh­ing 760 kg, pro­vid­ing a cruis­ing range of 85 kilo­me­ters with a flight time of up to 40 min­utes at a cruis­ing speed of 150 km / h.

About company

CycloTech is a tech­nol­o­gy leader in the field of CycloRo­tor pow­er­trains since 2004. Offers cus­tomized solu­tions to suit the spe­cif­ic needs of its cus­tomers’ air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tions. The main activ­i­ty is the devel­op­ment of motors of the Cyclo­gy­ro type, inte­gra­tion into the air­craft archi­tec­ture and relat­ed solu­tions in motor and flight con­trol sys­tems (RCS and FCS).