Development of a Non-Contact Transmission for Helicopter Applications

The US Army desires a solution to eliminate mechanical toothed gears and ball bearing contacts within the helicopter transmission to eliminate lubrication loss related catastrophic failures. Vishwa Robotics proposes a magnetically levitated gear box for rotor craft that results in simplification of the overall structure with substantial reduction in GTOW by elimination lubrication package. Eliminating the threat of loss of lubrication and elimination of mechanical frictional tribological mechanisms found in typical helicopter rotor mechanism allows increase in transmission life expectancy, robustness and dramatic increase in reliability. Vishwa concept can enable future scaling up to the power class of a utility, attack or cargo class helicopter. Finally Vishwa concept introduces a high efficiency continuously variable transmission to improve fuel efficiency.