Editing Tiltrotor (section)

{{Short description|Aircraft type}}
{{use American English|date=August 2022}}
{{use mdy dates|date=August 2022}}
[[File:US Navy 061206-N-0458E-076 A U.S. Marine Corps V-22 Osprey helicopter practices touch and go landings on the flight deck of the multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1).jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|The [[Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey]]]]

A '''tiltrotor''' is an [[aircraft]] that generates [[lift (force)|lift]] and [[thrust|propulsion]] by way of one or more powered [[Helicopter rotor|rotor]]s (sometimes called ''[[proprotor]]s'') mounted on rotating [[shaft (mechanical engineering)|shaft]]s or [[nacelle]]s usually at the ends of a fixed [[wing]]. Almost all tiltrotors use a [[transverse rotor]] design, with a few exceptions that use other [[multirotor]] layouts.

Tiltrotor design combines the [[VTOL]] capability of a [[helicopter]] with the speed and [[range (aircraft)|range]] of a conventional [[fixed-wing aircraft]].  For vertical flight, the rotors are angled so the [[plane of rotation]] is horizontal, generating lift the way a normal [[helicopter rotor]] does.  As the aircraft gains speed, the rotors are progressively tilted forward, with the plane of rotation eventually becoming vertical.  In this mode the rotors provide [[thrust]] as a [[propeller (aircraft)|propeller]], and the [[airfoil]] of the fixed wings takes over providing the lift via the forward motion of the entire aircraft.  Since the rotors can be configured to be more efficient for propulsion (e.g. with root-tip twist) and it avoids a helicopter's issues of [[retreating blade stall]], the tiltrotor can achieve higher [[cruise speed]]s and [[maximum takeoff weight|takeoff weight]]s than helicopters.

A tiltrotor aircraft differs from a [[tiltwing]] in that only the rotor pivots rather than the entire wing.  This method trades off efficiency in vertical flight for efficiency in [[STOL]]/[[STOVL]] operations.