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01/20/2025 08:30:38 pm

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2013 Paris Air Show: new exotic tiltrotor aircraft on show



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At the Paris Air Show, AgustaWestland Company shows off an exotic single-person aircraft, the plane is designed to investigate all-electric, no-hydraulic flight systems.

AgustaWestland is a British-Italian multinational helicopter design and manufacturing company, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Finmeccanica. Nowadays, there are electricvehicles on the road now. But aviation company AgustaWestland wants to have a place in the air too.

AgustaWestland showed off an exotic tiltrotor aircraft called Project Zero, it is powered by lithium batteries. It can fly, but project manager Jianye Zhang didn't say how far or how fast it could reach.

The single-person aircraft looks like a flying wing, but it has two propellers built into the surface of the wing. When taking off, the propellers push air downward to thrust Project Zero up like a helicopter; during the flight, the propellers rotate toward a vertical orientation to thrust Project Zero forward.

"For us, Project Zero is a demonstration--an incubator." project manager Jianye Zhang said. There are three technology goals that AgustaWestland wanted to accomplish with the design, they are an all-electric motor, a very precise propeller blade control that adjusts each blade's pitch 18 times a second, and a complete absence of the hydraulic systems commonly found in helicopters.

The maintenance of hydraulic systems is very troublesome and must be checked for leaks before every flight, so the company wanted to see what could be done without them, Zhang said. Project Zero is very light by using a lot of carbon fiber and other weight-saving materials. He didn't say how much the aircraft weighed precisely, just said it was more than 500 kilograms.

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