Airworthiness: Validation process to a new Main Rotor blade tip From modeling to the definition of experimental activities plan to validate analytical model

The developed thesis work derives from an internship with TPS S.p.a company, in Turin. TPS S.p.a is a leader company in aeronautical field providing support for design and certification of aeronautical products and parts. Through this work, I have been able to familiarize with DOA concept and aspects related to certification process and demonstrability of capability for design. The thesis consists of two parts. The first part aims to complete and refine the model about main rotor blade, developed by previous students theses, on which the new tip is supposed to be assembled. Specially, the MATLAB ^® codes are added related to obtain the natural frequencies and the shape mode about edgewise and torsional axes. This work permits, through equations set, subsequently to simulate the tests on main rotor blade and obtain an analytical solution about the overall blade behaviour. The second part aims to define experimental activities plan to be carry out on real main rotor blade. Afterwards, different test types are identified: some are useful for validation the model about its robustness and reliability, other used to compare the error percentual between analytical and exact solution. In this way, it is possible to know the information about the exact blade structural behaviour and correlate the results with those are determinate from developed analytical models during design phase, described in previous thesis works. This last aspect is especially important because, through correlation, the validation of modelling and simulation of itself blade are obtained.