News Releases

February 2008

Special "100 years of helicopters" prize awarded to Jean-Jacques Thibert

Jean-Jacques Thibert, Scientific Director of the Onera's Fluid Mechanics and Energetics branch, was awarded the EADS foundation special prize within the context of the centenary of the helicopter.

On 12 December last, on the occasion of the EADS company Foundation's annual awards ceremony, Jean-Jacques Thibert was awarded this special "centenary of the helicopter" prize to reward his work on the aerodynamics of helicopters between 1975 and 1985.

This work concerned the definition of airfoils for the main rotor, rear rotor, shrouded tail rotor, tail plane and fin. More especially, for the blades of the main rotor, around ten airfoils with relative thicknesses of 6 to 13 % were designed during this period, on the basis of specification drawn up by Eurocopter - Snias Marignane at the time. Today, these airfoils equip many helicopters, such as the Ecureuil, Dauphin and NH90. This work led to a significant improvement in the performances of rotors over the whole flight envelope (stationary flight and forward flight).

This prize celebrates ten years of work by the team at Onera, combining numerical simulation and experiments. It is a very strong reminder that Onera's applied research leads to concrete results from which industrial companies benefit. What could be more natural for a research body whose objectives all tend, more or less directly, towards technological innovation?

Last Update: March 27, 2008 - © ONERA 2009 - Terms of use