Cable Angle Feedback Control Systems to Improve Handling Qualities for Helicopters with Slung Loads

摘要

The ability of a helicopter to carry externally slung loads makes the aircraft very versatile for many civil and military operations. However, the piloted handling qualities of the helicopter are degraded by the presence of the slung load. A control system is developed that uses measurements of the slung load motions as well as conventional fuselage feedback to improve the handling qualities for hover/low speed operations. Past research has been limited to studies focused on load damping, as opposed to the piloted handling qualities focus of this paper. The approach implements an explicit model following control system with cable angle feedback for the externally loaded UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which is optimized via multi-objective optimization software to simultaneously meet stability, performance, and handling qualities requirements. The improvements provided by this control system are demonstrated in a piloted fixed base UH-60 simulation. Pilot comments and statistics are presented to show the effectiveness of the cable angle feedback control system as compared to a baseline control system.