Bringing relevance to freshman aerospace engineering: demonstration of a model scale comanche helicopter lag mode damper

To attract and encourage first-year undergraduates to undertake their studies in aerospace engineering, a single credit course was developed, entitled ENAE-100 The Aerospace Engineering Profession. A key element of this course is the illustration of the engineering process of design, test and evaluation as applied to aerospace engineering applications. A classroom demonstration was developed using a 1/6th model-scale helicopter lag mode damper that has similar properties to a model-scale damper used in the industrial helicopter model. The energy analysis for this classroom experiment is well within the skill level of the first year undergraduate.