The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
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The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
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Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#2The article is very vague on how the radioactivity allows detection of leaking gas.
The video at the bottom explains from 7:50 in. Gas pressure pressing on a spring holds a radiation shield in place. If the gas leaks the shield moves and the radiation can be detected.
Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#3What if the helicopter would have to operate in a contaminated area? Wouldn't it cause false positives?
> The CH-53 Sea Stallion first entered service in 1966
1966 is Cold War era, so, I think, an idea that a military helicopter would have to fly in an area that has been recently nuked wasn't totally inconceivable...
Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#4Often in software development I encounter code that seems overly complex. It's not always obvious at first glance whether that complexity is because it's solving a really difficult problem, or because the developers made it more complex than it needed to be.
Having no domain knowledge of the problems of detecting cracks in blades, this sounds like either a genius solution to a super hard problem, or unnecessary complexity.
Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#5Terrible explanation
Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#6What if the helicopter would have to operate in a contaminated area? Wouldn't it cause false positives? > The CH-53 Sea Stallion first entered service in 1966 1966 is Cold War era, so, I think, an idea that a military helicopter would have to fly in an area that has been recently nuked wasn't totally inconceivable...
Exposure to a nuclear blast doesn't necessarily make things radioactive. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not radioactive wastelands. Even in Chernobyl, the other reactors continued to operate for a time after the accident, and nature is thriving.
But, the radiation detector is on the upper surface of the rear fuselage. Hypothetical Beta particles from the ground will strike the underside of the aircraft and not the detector.
Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#7The article is very vague on how the radioactivity allows detection of leaking gas. The video at the bottom explains from 7:50 in. Gas pressure pressing on a spring holds a radiation shield in place. If the gas leaks the shield moves and the radiation can be detected.
The titanium spar is filled with gas. If there was a crack in the spar the gas would escape, therefore tripping the pressure sensitive radiation shield. Releasing radiation that can be detected inside the helicopter.
Wireless systems aren’t used for opsec reasons.
Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#8What if the helicopter would have to operate in a contaminated area? Wouldn't it cause false positives? > The CH-53 Sea Stallion first entered service in 1966 1966 is Cold War era, so, I think, an idea that a military helicopter would have to fly in an area that has been recently nuked wasn't totally inconceivable...
Exposure to a nuclear blast doesn't necessarily make things radioactive. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not radioactive wastelands. Even in Chernobyl, the other reactors continued to operate for a time after the accident, and nature is thriving. But, the radiation detector is on the upper surface of the rear fuselage. Hypothetical Beta particles from the ground will strike the underside of the aircraft and not the detect…
> Exposure to a nuclear blast doesn't necessarily make things radioactive
Isn’t this neutron activation?
Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#9Terrible explanation
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Re: The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
#10The article is very vague on how the radioactivity allows detection of leaking gas. The video at the bottom explains from 7:50 in. Gas pressure pressing on a spring holds a radiation shield in place. If the gas leaks the shield moves and the radiation can be detected.
There's a good comment:
MH-53E maintainer here. The system is IBIS (Inflight Blade Inspection System) and the little pods are BIM (blade inspection monitors). The box is pretty obvious sitting just behind the main rotor on the deck above the center engine. I found a random picture on the web:
And:
The IBIS devices provide in-flight warning of blade failure on various models of helicopters. One device is located on the root of each blade attached to the rotor. The IBIS detects a decrease in pressure in the blades of a CH-53 model helicopter. Any cracks in the blades will result in a decrease in air pressure in the blade. Such cracks could result in structural failure in the blade, thereby resulting in a potentially dangerous operational situation for the helicopter, such as a hard landing and/or injury to the craft and/or personnel up to, and including, death. Each device contains approximately 500 microcuries (18.5 MBq) of strontium-90 (Sr-90) in the form of a rolled metal foil, encased in a small stainless steel protective cylinder about the size of the press button on a ballpoint pen. The external radiation level of the IBIS is 0.8 mR/hr at 3 inches in the normal (shielded) mode, and 75 mR/hr at 12 inches in the failure (extended) mode.