Engineers at the Army Research Laboratory are exploring the use of carbon nanotubes to make helicopter blades perform better. Nanotubes have been shown to dissipate energy when embedded in small ...

Helicopters can deliver military troops or rescue the wounded in tight spaces, but their rotating blade design also puts a hard limit on their speed and maneuverability. Now researchers have begun ...

Even the best helicopters are loud, rickety gas guzzlers, and a big reason for that is the rotors themselves. As each blade cuts the air, it creates a turbulent wake; the next blade passes through ...

Wind turbines are being reinvented left, right, and center. A Swedish company is developing a floating wind turbine system made up of 126 small turbines spinning in unison. An American designer has ...

Along with serving as a warning system, though, the setup could also be used simply to study the behaviour of rotor blades, helping in the design of longer-lasting, better-performing models. Although ...

A dual-rotor concept to improve helicopter performance achieved first flight more than a year after originally planned. Will the design live up to its promise? A futuristic helicopter prototype ...

We4Ce (Almelo, Netherlands), a Dutch rotor blade design and technology supplier, announced completion of end-to-end blade tests in India for a novel 2.5-3-megawatt (MW) rotor blade currently under ...

Kopter is progressing with tests of its AW09 light-single in a new aerodynamically improved configuration and will also test new main rotor blades in the new year, but there is continued uncertainty ...

NASA is preparing for a future in the skies of Mars. After the massive success of the agency's Ingenuity Mars helicopter (above), engineers are working on the next generation of interplanetary drones.