A Simplified Approach to Assessment of Mission Success for Helicopter Landing on a Ship

摘要

In this paper, operation of a helicopter near a ship is statistically investigated to provide an estimate of the probability of successfully recovering manned rotorcraft on the deck of a moving ship. To this end, pitch, roll, and heave motion of the ship are calculated according to sea states. In addition, effect on dynamics of the rotorcraft from ship airwake is also considered in a simplified way. By assuming that a helicopter can land on a ship if a pilot maintains relative position and attitude difference within the safe boundary for a given time, the operational limits are probabilistically determined in terms of pilot's workload for a specified mission. The simulation environment consists of linearized helicopter dynamics, an optimal pilot model, effect of turbulent ship airwake, and ship motion. Control activities of the piloted helicopter for position holding with respect to the moving ship are transformed to generalized workload ratings. Simulation results show the proposed approach can evaluate and predict mission success rates for various operational combinations, allowing implementation into the overall effectiveness assessment of the ship and ship-helicopter combination.