Rotorcraft Flight Research Articles

Rotorcraft Flight Control Design for Rotor Noise Abatement

This article presents the development and implementation of active noise abatement flight control laws utilizing redundant control allocation in rotorcraft. The study starts by finding a periodic equilibrium of coupled rotorcraft flight dynamics and acoustics using a modified harmonic balance trim solution method. Next, the rotorcraft nonlinear time-periodic dynamics are linearized about its periodic equilibrium and transformed into an equivalent higher-order linear time-invariant system in harmonic decomposition form. Composite aeroacoustic measures are formulated as outputs of this system. To enable faster runtime and tractable control design, a reduced 8‐state model representative of the coupled rigid‐body dynamics and acoustics is obtained through residualization. An explicit model following control law with pseudoinverse allocation to redundant control surfaces–an active horizontal stabilizer in this study–is synthesized using the 8‐state model. The article further assesses the impact of noise alleviation control on handling qualities of conventional and compound rotorcraft in forward flight. The results demonstrate that redundant control allocation is an effective method for active reduction of unsteady rotor noise, with increasing effectiveness during aggressive maneuvers. Future-generation rotorcraft, particularly future vertical lift configurations featuring high control redundancy and aggressive maneuvering capabilities, can significantly benefit from noise abatement through redundant control allocation. Furthermore, the article highlights that while implementing noise abatement control in conventional helicopters can degrade handling qualities, the use of redundant control allocation in compound configurations offers noise reduction without compromising handling qualities.

Particularities of Rotorcraft in Dealing with Advanced Controllers

Advanced nonlinear controllers are a desirable solution to rotorcraft flight control as they can solve the system high nonlinear dynamic behavior. However, conventional nonlinear controllers such as Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (NDI) controller heavily rely on the availability of accurate model knowledge and this can be problematic for rotorcraft. Therefore, incremental control theory can solve the modelling errors sensitivity by relying on the information obtained from the sensors instead. The paper applied the Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) controller to rotorcraft case. It will be demonstrated that, for rotorcraft, the incremental nonlinear controllers depend on the delays introduced in the controller by the rotor dynamics. To correct this behaviour, residualization and synchronization methods need to be applied accordingly in order to remove the effects of rotor flapping (disctilt) dynamics from the controller. These particularities of rotorcraft in dealing with advanced controllers shows that incremental nonlinear controllers can have relatively small stability robustness margin and careful controller design is needed in order to account properly for rotorcraft time delays and unmodelled dynamics.

Linearized Models of the Coupled Rotorcraft Flight Dynamics and Acoustics for Real-Time Noise Prediction

This article demonstrates the linearization of the coupled rotorcraft flight dynamics and aeroacoustics to provide realtime acoustic predictions in generalized maneuvering flight. To demonstrate the methodology, the study makes use of a nonlinear simulation model of a generic utility helicopter (PSUHeloSim) that is coupled with an aeroacoustic solver based on a marching cubes algorithm. A periodic equilibrium of the coupled rotorcraft flight dynamics and acoustics is first found at a desired flight condition using a modified harmonic balance trim solution method. Next, the nonlinear time-periodic dynamics are linearized about that periodic equilibrium and transformed into an equivalent higher order linear time-invariant system in harmonic decomposition form. Composite aeroacoustic measures are included as an output of this system. To speed up runtime and make control design tractable, the order of these harmonic decomposition models is reduced via residualization to an 8-state model where the states are representative of the rigid-body dynamics of the aircraft. This 8-state model is shown to provide accurate acoustic response predictions for small-amplitude pilot inputs and to abate runtime by a factor of approximately 104, thus enabling acoustic predictions in generalized maneuvering flight that are significantly faster than real time. The 8-state model is subsequently used to demonstrate the use of linear system tools for the dynamic analysis of the coupled rotorcraft flight dynamics and acoustics.

On the effects of rotor induced vibrational stability on helicopter flight dynamics

This article investigates vibrational stabilization effects in rotorcraft flight dynamics. This study is motivated by recent results in flapping-wing flight, which showed that the time-varying aerodynamic and inertial loads due to the insect wing periodic motion induce a vibrational stabilization mechanism in hover. The dynamics of flapping-wing flyers and rotary-wing vehicles are both described by time-periodic systems so vibrational stabilization mechanisms can also have an effect on stability characteristics of rotary-wing vehicles. The article extends the use of the harmonic decomposition method to vibrational stability analysis of rotorcraft. Two cases are considered: vibrational stability due blade imbalance at hover, and vibrational stability due to number-of-blades-per-rotor-revolution (Nb\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$N_b$$\\end{document}/rev) in high-speed forward flight. Results show that while vibrations induced by rotor blade imbalance do not stabilize the hovering dynamics of a helicopter, these vibrations can still have a significant effect on the hovering dynamics. Rotor blade imbalance results in a symmetric effect on the roll and pitch axes, in that it tends to decrease the frequency of the subsidence modes of the hovering cubic, while the unstable oscillatory modes tend to increase in frequency and decrease in damping (destabilizing effect). On the other hand, the yaw/heave dynamics are relatively unaffected compared to the lateral and longitudinal axes. Moreover, Nb\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$N_b$$\\end{document}/rev rotor loads in forward flight are shown to reduce the damping of the coupled roll/pitch oscillation mode.

Tau Theory-Based Flare Control in Autonomous Helicopter Autorotation

A novel trajectory generation and control architecture for fully autonomous autorotative flare that combines rapid path generation with model-based control is proposed. The trajectory generation component uses optical Tau theory to compute flare trajectories for both longitudinal and vertical speed. These flare trajectories are tracked using a nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI) control law. One convenient feature of NDI is that it inverts the plant model in its feedback linearization loop, which eliminates the need for gain scheduling. However, the plant model used for feedback linearization still needs to be scheduled with the flight condition. This key aspect is leveraged to derive a control law that is scheduled with linearized models of the rotorcraft flight dynamics obtained in steady-state autorotation, while relying on a single set of gains. Computer simulations are used to demonstrate that the NDI control law is able to successfully execute autorotative flare in the UH-60 aircraft. Autonomous flare trajectories are compared to piloted simulation data to assess similarities and discrepancies between piloted and automatic control approaches. Trade studies examine which combinations of downrange distances and altitudes at flare initiation result in successful autorotative landings.

Advances and Modern Applications of Frequency-Domain Aircraft and Rotorcraft System Identification

This paper provides an overview of advances and applications of aircraft and rotorcraft flight dynamics system identification at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center over the past 20 years. An overarching topic is how frequency-domain system identification has evolved to aid modeling work of modern aircraft and rotorcraft configurations. The paper starts with a brief overview of the frequency-response method for system identification. Subsequently, the paper highlights and demonstrates several new advances using flight-test data from a conventional helicopter, fixed-wing aircraft, advanced coaxial compound rotorcraft, and a small multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle. The first advancement is the use of identification results to improve simulation model fidelity. The next advancement is the Joint Input-Output Method for identification of aircraft with highly correlated inputs. Next, the paper discusses the advancement of flexible constraints, which provide the ability to directly determine physical parameters from flight-test data. The paper then discusses a methodology to identify lower-order linearized dynamic inflow models from higher-order free wake aerodynamic models. Finally, the paper discusses model stitching, which is the technique of combining or stitching together individual linear models and trim data for discrete flight conditions to produce a continuous, full flight-envelope real-time stitched simulation model.

A New Heuristic Approach to Rotorcraft System Identification

High-fidelity rotorcraft flight simulation relies on the availability of a quality flight model that further demands a good level of understanding of the complexities arising from aerodynamic couplings and interference effects. This paper explores rotorcraft flight dynamics in the low-speed regime where such complexities abound and presents a new heuristic approach in the time domain to aid identification of nonlinear dynamics and fidelity assessment. The approach identifies flight model parameters "additively," based on their contribution to the local dynamic response of the system, in contrast with conventional approaches where parameter values are identified to minimize errors over a whole maneuver. In these early investigations, identified low-order, rigid-body, linear models show good comparison with flight-test data. The approach is extended to explore nonlinearities attributed to the so-called maneuver wake distortion and wake skew effects emerging in larger maneuvers. The results show a good correlation for the proposed nonlinear model structure, demonstrated by its capability to capture the time response and variations of the stability and control derivatives with response magnitude.

Rotorcraft Flight Regime Recognition in Complex Maneuvers Using Adaptive Extended Kalman Filter

Rotorcraft Flight Regime Recognition in Complex Maneuvers Using Adaptive Extended Kalman Filter

Linear Time-Invariant Approximations of Nonlinear Time-Periodic Systems

This paper discusses the development of a numerical method for the approximation of the nonlinear time-periodic rotorcraft flight dynamics with higher order linear time-invariant (LTI) models. The method relies on a per-rotor revolution perturbation scheme, which is of particular importance for the linearization of simulation models that do not allow for per-time-step perturbations, and for those output measures that necessitate the solution of partial differential equations and thus require several time steps to be computed. The paper demonstrates the application of the proposed methodology to obtain high-order LTI models capable of predicting vibrations for a generic utility helicopter. Simulations are used to validate the response of the linearized models against those from nonlinear simulations and from competing approaches in the literature. The proposed method is shown to predict accurately the nonlinear response for the case shown and for small amplitude maneuvers. Frequency-domain validation is also performed to compare the linear models derived with the proposed method with those obtained with harmonic decomposition, a competing approach based on a per-time-step perturbation scheme. Interestingly, the proposed algorithm yields nearly identical numerical results compared to harmonic decomposition, suggesting that the two methods are in fact equivalent but rely on different formulations.

Digital twin for component health- and stress-aware rotorcraft flight control

Digital twin for component health- and stress-aware rotorcraft flight control

Assessment of hydrogen fuel for rotorcraft applications

This paper presents the application of a multidisciplinary approach for the preliminary design and evaluation of the potential improvements in performance and environmental impact through the utilization of compressed (CGH2) and liquefied (LH2) hydrogen fuel for a civil tilt-rotor modelled after the NASA XV-15. The methodology deployed comprises models for rotorcraft flight dynamics, engine performance, flight path analysis, hydrogen tank and thermal management system sizing. Trade-offs between gravimetric efficiency, energy consumption, fuel burn, CO2 emissions, and cost are quantified and compared to the kerosene-fuelled rotorcraft. The analysis carried out suggests that for these vehicle scales, gravimetric efficiencies of the order of 13% and 30% can be attained for compressed and liquid hydrogen storage, respectively leading to reduced range capability relative to the baseline tilt-rotor by at least 40%. At mission level, it is shown that the hydrogen-fuelled configurations result in increased energy consumption by at least 12% (LH2) and 5% (CGH2) but at the same time, significantly reduced life-cycle carbon emissions compared to the kerosene counterpart. Although LH2 storage at cryogenic conditions has a higher gravimetric efficiency than CGH2 (at 700 bar), it is shown that for this class of rotorcraft, the latter is more energy efficient when the thermal management system for fuel pressurization and heating prior to combustion is accounted for.

Moving Spatial Turbulence Model for High-Fidelity Rotorcraft Maneuvering Simulation

A moving spatial turbulence model is developed for rotorcraft maneuvering simulation under different flight conditions. The recursive algorithms are adopted to model its distributed longitudinal turbulence components, which are correlated with the lateral and vertical axes to form a local spatial turbulence field. The flow field is constrained around the rotorcraft by following its movement, and the corresponding turbulence components are updated at a constant spatial interval. The statistical properties along the longitudinal, lateral, and vertical directions have been validated against the von Kármán theory. A synthetic simulation environment consisting of a flight dynamics model and a pilot model is constructed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the turbulence model. Its performance is validated by comparing the power spectral densities of both rotorcraft responses and pilot controls in turbulence against flight test data. The piloted simulation results on an Approach-to-Hovering task show that the handling qualities ratings are susceptive to the level of turbulence and significantly increase when performing aggressive controls. The simulation also accurately predicts the expected effect of varied aircraft speed, wind speed, turbulence intensity, and stability augmentation system on piloted handling qualities rating for rotorcraft flight in turbulence.

Digital Twin Approach for Component Health-Informed Rotorcraft Flight Parameter Optimization

Rotorcraft components experience different stress levels based on the flight parameters and intensity of the rotorcraft mission, which in turn dictates the maintenance schedule as well as life expectancy for the component. To improve the resilience of a rotorcraft to safely complete a mission, the rotorcraft’s maneuvers can be designed to minimize the stress experienced by critical mechanical components. This paper discusses a methodology to optimize rotorcraft flight parameters to minimize stress on critical mechanical components based on their current and predicted states while satisfying the operational constraints. A digital twin approach is pursued to support probabilistic diagnosis, prognosis, and optimization. Comprehensive rotorcraft analysis and finite element models are used to predict the stress in the rotorcraft component under different flight conditions. Diagnostic information is used to estimate the health state and prognosis model error after every flight. Surrogate models are constructed for diagnosis and prognosis to increase the efficiency of the uncertainty and optimization analyses. The flight parameters are optimized for a future mission using the updated prognosis model by minimizing the stress in the component under uncertainty. The proposed methodology is demonstrated with a synthetic experiment for a simple flight path.

Handling Qualities in Rotorcraft Conceptual Design

This paper presents the development of a rotorcraft conceptual design tool able to incorporate handling qualities assessment at an early design stage. After a first conventional sizing, performed utilizing NASA’s NDARC software, a linearized model of the rotorcraft flight mechanics is built. The linear model is augmented by a simplified control system, designed according to structured H_{infty } techniques, to determine augmentation requirements, rather than design the actual flight control system. ADS-33 Bandwidth and Phase-Delay standards are exploited to objectively assess the handling qualities of the current design and to drive an iterative redesign process aimed at enhancing the handling qualities ratings. The rotorcraft parameters resulting from the augmented sizing are subsequently used to automatically generate a real-time capable multibody model, which can be used for the subjective evaluation of its handling qualities via piloted flight simulation. The tool capabilities are demonstrated by designing a conventional lightweight helicopter of the class of the Airbus Helicopters BO105.

Correlation Analysis of Energy Consumption of Agricultural Rotorcraft

With the rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicle technology, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely used in the field of agricultural plant protection. Compared with fuel-driven UAVs, electrically driven rotorcrafts have many advantages such as lower cost, simpler operation, good maneuverability and cleaner power, which them popular in the plant protection. However, electrical rotorcrafts still face battery problems in actual operation, which limits its working time and application. Aiming at this issue, this paper studied the influence of rotorcraft flight parameters on energy consumption through series of carefully designed flight experiments. First of all, the linear motion experiments have been designed that the rotorcraft was made to perform speed tests and acceleration test with the speed varied from 2∼9 m/s. Secondly, the turning maneuver experiments are carried out under the different circular routes, a rotorcraft was made to conduct successive steering maneuvers at a certain speed of 2 m/s. With the collected tests data, the relation of the energy consumption and the flight dynamic parameter are analyzed through correlation analysis, and the test results of different pairs of experiments have been compared. The research results of this paper would encourage the agricultural rotorcraft to make less maneuvers during operation, which can also provide practical experience and data support for subsequent optimization of flight parameters and reduction of energy consumption.

Temporal causality-based feature selection for fault prediction in rotorcraft flight controls

Temporal causality-based feature selection for fault prediction in rotorcraft flight controls

XGBoost Gradient-Boosted Tree Predictions Using Limited Data for Coaxial Rotor Helicopters

The use of finite-state methods is critical to the development of accurate and efficient inflow models used in rotorcraft flight dynamics simulation and control. Recent work in the finite-state field has allowed for the application of these models to multirotor systems using the adjoint theorem, which involves time delays and adjoint variables. However, the addition of time delays and adjoint variables drives the necessity for the addition of further inflow states to achieve model accuracy. Computation with a higher numbers of inflow states requires greater computing power and therefore limits the ability of real-time analysis. To help mitigate these issues, this paper explores the use of a gradient booted trees in XGBoostTM, as well as the use of varied, lower state training data and limited higher state training data, to accurately predict the velocity on the lower rotor of a coaxial rotor helicopter. The investigation involves XGBoost hyperparameter searches to determine the best model, variation in training and testing subset splits, and use of validation subset comparisons for identifying the best performing model.

Multi-Input MultiOutput Model-Following Control Design Methods for Rotorcraft

Two methods of multi-input multioutput (MIMO) command-model-following control design are compared for rotorcraft flight control. The first, explicit model following (EMF), employs single-input single-output inverse plants with a dynamic decoupling matrix, which is a purely feed-forward approach to inverting the plant. The second is dynamic inversion (DI), which involves both feed-forward and feedback path elements to invert the plant. The EMF design is purely linear, while the DI design has some nonlinear elements in vertical rate control. For each of these methods, an architecture is presented that provides angular rate model following with selectable vertical rate model following. Implementation challenges of both EMF and DI are covered, and methods of dealing with them are presented. These two MIMO model-following approaches are evaluated regarding (1) fidelity to the command model and (2) turbulence rejection. Both are found to provide good tracking of commands and reduction of cross coupling.

Rotorcraft Lateral-Directional Oscillations: The Anatomy of a Nuisance Mode

High-fidelity rotorcraft flight simulation relies on the availability of a quality flight model that further demands a good level of understanding of the complexities arising from aerodynamic couplings and interference effects. One such example is the difficulty in the prediction of the characteristics of the rotorcraft lateral-directional oscillation (LDO) mode in simulation. Achieving an acceptable level of the damping of this mode is a design challenge requiring simulation models with sufficient fidelity that reveal sources of destabilizing effects. This paper is focused on using System Identification to highlight such fidelity issues using Liverpool's FLIGHTLAB Bell 412 simulation model and in-flight LDO measurements from the bare airframe National Research Council's (Canada) Advanced Systems Research Aircraft. The simulation model was renovated to improve the fidelity of the model. The results show a close match between the identified models and flight test for the LDO mode frequency and damping. Comparison of identified stability and control derivatives with those predicted by the simulation model highlight areas of good and poor fidelity.

Wind Tunnel Test of a Rotorcraft with Lift Compounding

Rotorcraft flight speed is limited by compressibility effects on the advancing blade side and decreasing lift potential on the retreating blade side. It may thus be beneficial to employ a hingeless rotor to generate additional lift with the advancing blade and compensate the resulting rolling moment with a fixed wing on the retreating blade side. This concept is a form of "lift compounding" that appears to show enormous potential. The present paper presents results of a wind tunnel test with a slowed, hingeless rotor and single fixed wing on the retreating blade side. Based on rotor test stand data and flow field measurements, the impact of operational and rotor parameters on system performance and aerodynamics is examined, mutual interaction effects between rotor and fixed wing are analyzed, and dominant flow structures are characterized in the reverse flow region on the retreating blade side. Flow field analysis reveals a reverse flow entrance vortex that freely convects through the reverse flow region and rivals the blade tip vortices in strength. Contrary to previous beliefs, this vortex originates from upstream of the reverse flow region and only its detachment from the rotor blade is related to entering this region. The combination of finite rolling moment trim and aft shaft tilt significantly increases rotor lift coefficient and corresponding peak lift-to-drag ratio of the compound rotorcraft. Results are compared with predictions from a comprehensive rotor analysis that is expanded to cover the main effects of the added fixed wing and is able to reproduce general performance trends of the rotorcraft. The present study highlights that adding a single fixed wing and hingeless rotor to a high-speed rotorcraft could significantly improve its performance.