A swashplate, also known as slant disk, is a

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

device used to translate the motion of a rotating shaft into

reciprocating motion Reciprocating motion, also called reciprocation, is a repetitive up-and-down or back-and-forth linear motion. It is found in a wide range of mechanisms, including reciprocating engines and pumps. The two opposite motions that comprise a single ...

, or vice versa. The working principle is similar to

crankshaft A crankshaft is a mechanical component used in a reciprocating engine, piston engine to convert the reciprocating motion into rotational motion. The crankshaft is a rotating Shaft (mechanical engineering), shaft containing one or more crankpins, ...

, Scotch yoke, or wobble, nutator, and Z-crank drives in engine designs. It was originally invented to replace a crankshaft, and is one of the most popular concepts used in crankless engines. It was invented by Anthony Michell in 1917.

Construction

A swashplate consists of a disk attached to a shaft. If the disk were aligned perpendicular to the shaft, then rotating the shaft would merely turn the disk with no reciprocating (or ''swashplate'') effect. But instead the disk is mounted at an oblique angle, which causes its edge to appear to describe a path that oscillates along the shaft's length as observed from a non-rotating point of view away from the shaft. The greater the disk's angle to the shaft, the more pronounced is this apparent linear motion. The apparent linear motion can be turned into an actual linear motion by means of a follower that does not turn with the swashplate but presses against one of the disk's two surfaces near its circumference. The device has many similarities to the

cam Cam or CAM may refer to: Science and technology * Cam (mechanism), a mechanical linkage which translates motion * Camshaft, a shaft with a cam * Camera or webcam, a device that records images or video In computing * Computer-aided manufacturin ...

Uses

Swashplates can be used in an axial engine in place of a crankshaft to translate the motion of a piston into rotary motion. Such engines are the only variation of the cam engine to have any success.

Internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal comb ...

s and

Stirling engine A Stirling engine is a heat engine that is operated by the cyclic expansion and contraction of air or other gas (the ''working fluid'') by exposing it to different temperatures, resulting in a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical Work (ph ...

s have been built using this mechanism. Duke Engines has been working on such a platform since 1993. The axial piston pump drives a series of pistons aligned parallel with a shaft through a swashplate to pump a fluid. A common example of a swashplate application in a fluid pump is the

compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Many compressors can be staged, that is, the gas is compressed several times in steps o ...

of a present-day automobile air conditioning system. By varying the angle of the swashplate, the pistons' stroke (and, therefore, the compressor's cooling capacity) can be dynamically adjusted. A helicopter swashplate is a pair of plates, one rotating and one fixed, that are centered on the main rotor shaft. The rotating plate is linked to the rotor head, and the fixed plate is linked to the operator controls. Displacement of the alignment of the fixed plate is transferred to the rotating plate, where it becomes reciprocal motion of the rotor blade linkages. This type of differential pitch control, known as cyclic pitch, allows the helicopter rotor to provide selective lift in any direction. The swashplate can also transfer a combined static pitch increase to all rotor blades, which is known as collective pitch. Nutating flowmeters and pumps have similar motions to the wobble of a swashplate, but do not necessarily transform the motion to a reciprocating motion at any time.

Active electronically scanned array An active electronically scanned array (AESA) is a type of phased array antenna, which is a computer-controlled antenna array in which the beam of radio waves can be electronically steered to point in different directions without moving the a ...

(AESA) radars are flat plates that can scan up to sixty degrees in any direction from directly ahead of them. By mounting an AESA radar on a swashplate, the swashplate angle is added to the electronic scan angle. The typical swashplate angle chosen for this application is 40 degrees, enabling the radar to scan a total angle of 200 degrees out of 360.Gripen NG AESA Radar
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References

External links

* – Video of a swashplate in action {{Piston engine configurations, state=uncollapsed Linkages (mechanical)