Conceptual Design of a Piston Driven Light Twin Helicopter

The aim of this work is the conceptual design of a low cost, twin-engine helicopter in the category of Very Light Rotorcraft CS-VLR (Anonymous, 2008) to be employed for pilot training and for territorial and environmental monitoring. A new class of rotorcraft is developed to ll a gap currently present in the market: A twin piston-engine helicopter. The twin engine will ensure the possibility to certify the aircraft as a Class-A VTOL aircraft and to y over densely populated areas. At the same time, the piston engine technology will ensure low acquisition and operating costs compared with classical twin-turbine engine helicopters, making this solution very attractive for the envisaged operative roles. The possibility to design such type or aircraft can be achieved by exploiting the potential of the Twin Pack Engine System (TEPS), a twin piston motorization that possesses the appropriate performance, degree of redundancy, reliability and costs for this peculiar role. The TEPS engine is currently developed by Robby Moto Engineering. The project is the result of the collaboration between Robby Moto Engineering (Project Manager), the Aerospace Science and Technology and Mechanical departments of Politecnico di Milano, AQM and Metasystem.