Academic literature on the topic 'Helicopter flight operations'

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science) Naval Postgraduate School, September 1995.<br>"September 1995." Thesis advisor(s): Michael J. Zyda, John S. Falby. Includes bibliographical references (p. 107). Also available online.

This dissertation focuses on constrained control of two applications: helicopter and ocean current turbines (OCT). A major contribution in the helicopter application is a novel model predictive control (MPC) framework for helicopter shipboard operations in high demanding sea-based conditions. A complex helicopter-ship dynamics interface has been developed as a system of implicit nonlinear ordinary differential equations to capture essential characteristics of the nonlinear helicopter dynamics, the ship dynamics, and the ship airwake interactions. Various airwake models such as Control Equivalent Turbulence Inputs (CETI) model and Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) data of the airwake are incorporated in the interface to describe a realistic model of the shipborne helicopter. The feasibility of the MPC design is investigated using two case studies: automatic deck landing during the ship quiescent period in sea state 5, and lateral reposition toward the ship in different wind-over-deck conditions. To improve the overall MPC performance, an updating scheme for the internal model of the MPC is proposed using linearization around operating points. A mixed-integer MPC algorithm is also developed for helicopter precision landing on moving decks. The performance of this control structure is evaluated via numerical simulations of the automatic deck landing in adverse conditions such as landing on up-stroke, and down-stroke moving decks with high energy indices. Kino-dynamic motion planning for coordinated maneuvers to satisfy the helicopter-ship rendezvous conditions is implemented via mixed integer quadratic programming. In the OCT application, the major contribution is that a new idea is leveraged from helicopter blade control by introducing cyclic blade pitch control in OCT. A minimum energy, constrained control method, namely Output Variance Constrained (OVC) control is studied for OCT flight control in the presence of external disturbances. The minimum achievable output variance bounds are also computed and a parametric study of design parameters is conducted to evaluate their influence on the OVC performance. The performance of the OVC control method is evaluated both on the linear and nonlinear OCT models. Furthermore, control design for the OCT with sensor failures is also examined. Lastly, the MPC strategy is also investigated to improve the OCT flight control performance in simultaneous satisfaction of multiple constraints and to avoid blade stall.<br>Ph. D.

Helicopter operations in the vicinity of small naval surface vessels often require excessive pilot workload. Because of the unsteady flow field and large mean velocity gradients, the envelope for flight operations is limited. This experimental investigation uses a 1:144 scale model of the U.S. Navy destroyer DDG-81 to explore the problem. Both active and passive flow control techniques were used to improve the flow field in the helicopterâ s final decent onto the flight deck. Wind tunnel data was collected at a set of grid points over the shipâ s flight deck using a single component hotwire. Results show that the use of porous surfaces decreases the unsteadiness of the flow field. Further improvements are found by injecting air through these porous surfaces, causing a reduction in unsteadiness in the landing region of 6.6% at 0 degrees wind-over-deck (WOD) and 8.3% at 20 degrees WOD. Other passive configurations tested include fences placed around the hangar deck edges which move the unsteady shear layer away from the flight deck. Although these devices cause an increase in unsteadiness downstream of the edge of the fence when compared to the baseline, the reticulated foam fence caused an overall decrease in unsteadiness in the landing region of 12.1% at 20 degrees WOD.<br>Master of Science

Les limitations d’atterrissage des hélicoptères ne sont pas valables dans l'environnement à bord d’un navire. Il n'existe aucune méthodologie approuvée de l'analyse ou de la simulation pour évaluer la compatibilité des hélicoptères-navires et préparer les essais de qualification hélicoptères-navires. Dans ce contexte, le présent travail présente le développement et l'analyse d'une méthodologie hors ligne pour déterminer les limites opérationnelles hélicoptères-navires, SHOLs, en fonction des prédictions d’un modèle de pilote humain. Pour cela, des essais pilotés par des humains sont effectués au simulateur de l’ONERA, Salon de Provence. Sur la base des résultats de ces tests, une méthodologie innovante est validée pour déterminer la limitation de la charge de travail de pilotage, à partir des mesures des déplacements des contrôles d'hélicoptère. En outre, sont validés des modifications innovantes sur un modèle de pilote humain pour pouvoir suivre les trajectoires souhaitées et fournir le même niveau d'activité aux contrôles qu'un véritable pilote. Un ensemble de critères objectifs, correspondant aux marges de sécurité, s'ajoute aux critères subjectifs, correspondant aux limitations de la charge de travail du pilote. Une routine de simulation hors ligne, appelée SholSim, est programmée pour réaliser des simulations avec le modèle pilote et vérifier l'acceptabilité des conditions de vol, selon les critères subjectifs et objectifs. Par conséquent, le présent travail présente la première estimation, dans la littérature, des SHOLs entièrement obtenus à partir d'outils hors ligne, basés uniquement sur les prédictions de modèle pilote<br>Helicopter land-based limitations are not valid in the shipboard environment. There is no analytical or simulated approved methodology for evaluating shipboard helicopter compatibility issues and preparing for at-sea flight tests. In this context, the present work presents the development and analysis of an offline methodology to determine the Ship-Helicopter Operating Limitations, SHOLs, based on pilot model predictions. For this, pilot-in-the-loop simulation trials are performed at the engineering fixed-base simulation facility of ONERA, Salon de Provence. Based on these test results, an innovative methodology is proposed and validated to determine the safe pilot workload limitation, from the measurements of the helicopter control displacements. In addition, it is proposed and validated innovative modifications on a classical pilot model enabling to follow complex predefined desired trajectories and provide the same level of control activity of a real pilot. A set of objective criteria, corresponding to the safety margins, is established in addition to the subjective criteria, corresponding to the safe pilot workload limitations. An offline simulation routine, so-called SholSim, is coded to run all models and verify the acceptability of the flight conditions, according to the subjective and objective criteria. Therefore, the present work presents the first estimation, in the literature, of the SHOLs fully obtained from offline tools, based only on pilot model predictions. The proposed methodology is promising, confirmed by predicting coherent limits when compared to the ones defined by the pilot-in-the-loop simulation trials

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited<br>Usage Monitoring requires accurate regime recognition. For each regime, there is a usage assigned for each component. For example, the damage accumulated at a component is higher if the aircraft is undergoing a high G maneuver than in level flight. The objective of this research is to establish regime recognition models using classification algorithms. The data used in the analysis are the parametric data collected by the onboard system and the actual data, consisting of the correct regime collected from the flight cards. This study uses Rpart (with a tree output) and C5.0 (with a ruleset output) to establish two different models. Before model fitting, the data was divided into smaller datasets that represent regime families by subsetting using important flight parameters. Nonnormal tolerance intervals are constructed on the uninteresting values; then these values in the interval are set to zero to be muted (e.g. excluded). These processes help reduce the effect of noise on classification. The final models had correct classification rates over 95%. The number of bad misclassifications were minimized (e.g. the number of bad misclassifications of a level flight regime as a hover regime was minimized), but the models were not as powerful in classifying the low-speed regimes as in classifying high-speed regimes.<br>Outstanding Thesis

Military helicopter operations require precise maneuverability characteristics for performance to be determined for the entire helicopter flight envelope. Historically, these maneuverability analyses are combinatorial in nature and involve human-interaction, which hinders their integration into conceptual design. A model formulation that includes the necessary quantitative measures and captures the impact of changing requirements real-time is presented. The formulation is shown to offer a more conservative estimate of maneuverability than traditional energy-based formulations through quantitative analysis of a typical pop-up maneuver. Although the control system design is not directly integrated, two control constraint measures are deemed essential in this work: control deflection rate and trajectory divergence rate. Both of these measures are general enough to be applied to any control architecture, while at the same time enable quantitative trades that relate overall vehicle maneuverability to control system requirements. The dimensionality issues stemming from the immense maneuver space are mitigated through systematic development of a maneuver taxonomy that enables the operational envelope to be decomposed into a minimal set of fundamental maneuvers. The taxonomy approach is applied to a helicopter canonical example that requires maneuverability and design to be assessed simultaneously. The end result is a methodology that enables the impact of design choices on maneuverability to be assessed for the entire helicopter operational envelope, while enabling constraints from control system design to be assessed real-time.

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2004.<br>Thesis advisor(s): Lyn R. Whitaker, Arnold H. Buss. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-78). Also available online.

Carefree handling refers to the ability of a pilot to operate an aircraft without the need to continuously monitor aircraft operating limits. At the heart of all carefree handling or maneuvering systems, also referred to as envelope protection systems, are algorithms and methods for predicting future limit violations. Recently, envelope protection methods that have gained more acceptance, translate limit proximity information to its equivalent in the control channel. Envelope protection algorithms either use very small prediction horizon or are static methods with no capability to adapt to changes in system configurations. Adaptive approaches maximizing prediction horizon such as dynamic trim, are only applicable to steady-state-response critical limit parameters. In this thesis, a new adaptive envelope protection method is developed that is applicable to steady-state and transient response critical limit parameters. The approach is based upon devising the most aggressive optimal control profile to the limit boundary and using it to compute control limits. Pilot-in-the-loop evaluations of the proposed approach are conducted at the Georgia Tech Carefree Maneuver lab for transient longitudinal hub moment limit protection. Carefree maneuvering is the dual of carefree handling in the realm of autonomous Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Designing a flight control system to fully and effectively utilize the operational flight envelope is very difficult. With the increasing role and demands for extreme maneuverability there is a need for developing envelope protection methods for autonomous UAVs. In this thesis, a full-authority automatic envelope protection method is proposed for limit protection in UAVs. The approach uses adaptive estimate of limit parameter dynamics and finite-time horizon predictions to detect impending limit boundary violations. Limit violations are prevented by treating the limit boundary as an obstacle and by correcting nominal control/command inputs to track a limit parameter safe-response profile near the limit boundary. The method is evaluated using software-in-the-loop and flight evaluations on the Georgia Tech unmanned rotorcraft platform- GTMax. The thesis also develops and evaluates an extension for calculating control margins based on restricting limit parameter response aggressiveness near the limit boundary.