Handling Qualities Evaluation of an Autogiro Against the Existing Rotorcraft Criteria

摘要

Despite having first been developed in the 1920s, the autogiro has never been subject to handling qualities requirements. This paper presents a first logical step in developing handling qualities criteria for the autogiro, and that is to assess autogiro handling qualities against existing rotorcraft criteria. It is demonstrated that the autogiro's objective handling qualities can be estimated using frequency domain criteria from the ADS-33E-PRF, AGARD-R-577-70, and MIL-HDBK-1797 documents. The assessment is based on flight test data for longitudinal and lateral-directional stick-fixed oscillations and frequency sweeps collected from flight trials of a Glasgow University research autogiro.