Tu-95MS "Bear"

Hole wrote:

The training exercise also involved Tu-95MS long-range aircraft, which fired air-launched cruise missiles.

Not sure why those are tested. Looking at the SMO they seem to work pretty fine.

During wartime, with all the experience gained, enginerrs become much more creative.

Who knows what they really tested.

New hypersonic turboprops.

I know you are joking, but making very fast propeller blade tips is very easy... the longer the blades the faster the tips move.

The problem is that when they reach supersonic speeds they mostly just make noise.

I think someone complaining about the noise a Bear makes obviously hasn't heard a Huey UH-1 or for that matter a Harvard trainer... because of tip speed they really make a loud noise.

I do not understand why they are not using curved tip propellers on the Tu-95. This reduces tip speed and noise. There is no loss of performance that
I am aware of. In fact, the transition supersonic tip regime is a loss of thrust performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scimitar_propeller

It is worse than the article describes. At speeds where supersonic shocks are generate there is also cavitation. Similar to the submarine problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra-rotating_propellers

Contra-rotating propellers make more noise but there is no discussion of a bad mix with curved blades. It is possible curved blades would amplify the
noise associated with the contra-rotating configuration. But I think the trans-sonic shock regime is worse for noise generation, considering cavitation.

It is not like they don't know how to make propeller blades... the blades on the engines on the An-70 are optimised for thrust for takeoff at heavy loads, but they are not optimised to fly at the speeds the Bear flys at... no other propeller driven aircraft flys at the speeds the Bear flys at, which is why other propeller driven aircraft have different looking blades.

I suspect they are optimised to generate sufficient thrust for high speed flight at the altitude the aircraft operates at... and changing them to increased thrust on the ground for takeoff like the D-27 propfans for the An-70 might help with take off but might also reduce top and cruising speed at operational heights.

A turboprop based on the PD-35 that has twelve blades on the front and 8 blades at the rear might generate enormous thrust but reduce top speed flight performance and be slower than the blades and engines currently being used.