In-Flight Tracking Control for Helicopters using Active Trailing Edge Flaps

摘要

The current paper presents a new active in-flight tracking control system for helicopters equipped with trailing edge flap actuators on the rotor blades. The objective of the in-flight tracking controller is to minimize vibrations in the helicopter cabin and / or vibratory loads at the rotor hub induced by static blade dissimilarities. The control design is based on a steady-state transfer matrix from flap inputs to vibration outputs, which is first identified experimentally and then "symmetrized". For this design model, an analytically derived Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse is used which plays a key role to overcome restrictions of existing approaches such as the dependency on full-rank transfer matrices. The system is verified through flight test campaigns carried out with a full scale experimental helicopter. The results demonstrate that the presented in-flight tracking system effectively minimizes the tracking error induced vibrations at frequency 1/rev and 2/rev.