The Blade That Would Make Helicopters Almost Silent
Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 10:00 am
I wouldn't read too much into that, the "conventional" blade that they use for comparison would be most unlikely to be used in any current helicopter -the comparison is not dissimilar to comparing the noise from an early 7.2K HD to an SSD because they have roughly similar capacities. Valid; but not really useful.
The Eurocopter blade is really only notable for containing an arch and electric tip actuation (and it's the arch that improves the vortex interaction). The forward swept tip is not uncommon and has been dealt with very conservatively on what EC are currently showing