Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying Qualities

A comprehensive flight control law design method based on adaptive control is presented in this paper. The proposed method consists of three basic modules—model decoupling, online system identification and adaptive pole placement. The model decoupling module decouples the helicopter flight dynamics...

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Main Author: Wei Wu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-01-01
Series:Aerospace
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/12/1/65
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author Wei Wu
author_facet Wei Wu
author_sort Wei Wu
collection DOAJ
description A comprehensive flight control law design method based on adaptive control is presented in this paper. The proposed method consists of three basic modules—model decoupling, online system identification and adaptive pole placement. The model decoupling module decouples the helicopter flight dynamics model based on dynamic inversion technique. This procedure helps to reduce the difficulties in online system identification and adaptive controller design. In online system identification module, a recursive extended least squares algorithm is established to identify the augmented linear flight dynamics model which is composed of helicopter model and unideal noise model. The helicopter model parameters and the noise parameters are identified simultaneously which improves the identification accuracy as well as robustness. Pole placement is implemented in the last module, and an optimization method is developed to help selecting ideal poles. The adaptive rule in this step is designed based on eigenvalue analysis of the model to remove all unnecessary oscillations of the control parameters. An adaptive controller is designed according to the developed method for the UH-60A helicopter based on a nonlinear simulation program. Typical response types are also implemented. The simulation results show that the designed adaptive controller has high performance as well as robustness in both hover and forward flight.
format Article
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institution Kabale University
issn 2226-4310
language English
publishDate 2025-01-01
publisher MDPI AG
record_format Article
series Aerospace
spelling doaj-art-0d21456880cb42d1ac8fa4db529353aa2025-01-24T13:15:42ZengMDPI AGAerospace2226-43102025-01-011216510.3390/aerospace12010065Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying QualitiesWei Wu0Department of Helicopters, College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, ChinaA comprehensive flight control law design method based on adaptive control is presented in this paper. The proposed method consists of three basic modules—model decoupling, online system identification and adaptive pole placement. The model decoupling module decouples the helicopter flight dynamics model based on dynamic inversion technique. This procedure helps to reduce the difficulties in online system identification and adaptive controller design. In online system identification module, a recursive extended least squares algorithm is established to identify the augmented linear flight dynamics model which is composed of helicopter model and unideal noise model. The helicopter model parameters and the noise parameters are identified simultaneously which improves the identification accuracy as well as robustness. Pole placement is implemented in the last module, and an optimization method is developed to help selecting ideal poles. The adaptive rule in this step is designed based on eigenvalue analysis of the model to remove all unnecessary oscillations of the control parameters. An adaptive controller is designed according to the developed method for the UH-60A helicopter based on a nonlinear simulation program. Typical response types are also implemented. The simulation results show that the designed adaptive controller has high performance as well as robustness in both hover and forward flight.https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/12/1/65flight controladaptive controlhelicopterssystem identificationflying quality
spellingShingle Wei Wu
Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying Qualities
Aerospace
flight control
adaptive control
helicopters
system identification
flying quality
title Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying Qualities
title_full Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying Qualities
title_fullStr Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying Qualities
title_full_unstemmed Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying Qualities
title_short Adaptive Controller Design for Improving Helicopter Flying Qualities
title_sort adaptive controller design for improving helicopter flying qualities
topic flight control
adaptive control
helicopters
system identification
flying quality
url https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/12/1/65
work_keys_str_mv AT weiwu adaptivecontrollerdesignforimprovinghelicopterflyingqualities