A Piezocomposite Rotor With Contactless Power and Data Transmission

This paper presents a summary of the ongoing research and development of a solid-state piezo-composite rotor design for use in rotary systems. The proposed hub-rotor system can be implemented in unmanned-aerial-vehicles such as single-rotor, tandem-rotor, multi-copter, and ducted-fan rotorcraft, or other rotating systems such as wind turbines, turbine engines and marine propellers. The preliminary feasibility of the solid-state rotor concept has been previously demonstrated through flight-testing a prototype on a quad-copter vehicle platform. This paper presents a summary of previous findings, and a new solid-state rotor prototype with the corresponding experimental results.