Indranil wrote:Hari sir,
I did not completely follow the reasoning. With a MGB which can take the max power of the engine at sea level, wouldn't you have even more power at your disposal while hovering with a submerged dunking sonar?
Saar,
The fundamental Q one needs to ask for the dunking sonar role is:
Can the helicopter’s engines provide the power required at a maximum of cruise or max continuous power (which is a non-time rated power level), with the helicopter kitted out in the required sonar configuration and with fuel required for the specified time on station?
If this answer is yes, then the design of the helicopter is in the reckoning.
Then comes other equally important aspects, such as control and handling (including crosswinds), avionics including autopilot for automated transition to hover, auto-hover, etc for night op, ship borne footprint and other related requirements, blah, blah….
The ALH Mk-III already fits the above bill.
If the designer now changes the MGB to accept more power from the de-rated engines, then there is an attendant weight increase, increase / change in tail rotor transmission and tail rotor, more fuel required for higher power from engines and so on. Also we need to keep in mind that beyond an optimal point, even if we pump in more power to the main rotor, its thrust peaks off and then we need to increase the rotor diameter or add another blade…
And we end up with a different animal altogether!