Improvements in Small-scale Helicopter Rotor Modeling for the Real-time Simulation of Hovering Flight

Abstract

The traditional flight mechanics for scale helicopters uses a counter-clockwise, reduced-order rotor model that does not account for off-axis responses. The present paper deals with an improved rotor model that can set different directions of rotation and also reflects the off-axis responses of the rotor. In addition, the iterative method, which is used for rotor thrust calculations, is replaced with the dynamic inflow model. The nonlinear simulation results correlate well with the flight test results.