Suppression of ground resonance in rotorcraft using active landing gear

This article examines the fundamental aspects of controlling ground resonance in rotorcraft equipped with actively controlled landing gear. Ground resonance is a mechanical instability affecting rotorcraft on the ground. It occurs at certain rotor speeds, where the lead–lag motion of the rotor couples with the motion of fuselage creating a self-excited oscillation. Typically, passive or semi-active lag dampers are used to avoid instability; however, these are undesirable from a design and maintenance perspective. Innovations in active landing gear for rotorcraft, such as articulated robotic legs, have provided an alternate approach to avoid the instability, eliminating the need for lag dampers with respect to ground resonance. This article extends classic ground resonance to include movable landing gear and identifies key physical parameters affecting dynamic behavior. Applying LQ optimal control to this model, it is shown that ground resonance instability can be eliminated using active landing gear as the control mechanism, even when there is no lag damping present in the rotor. In addition, while superior performance is achieved when landing gear movement can occur both longitudinally and laterally, it is still possible to stabilize ground resonance with inputs in a single direction, albeit with reduced performance.

Nonlinear dynamics and control of helicopter ground resonance

Ground resonance is an aero-mechanical instability in helicopters that use soft in-plane rotors. Traditionally, ground resonance is mitigated by using passive lead–lag dampers that provide sufficient in-plane damping. However, these dampers because of their passive nature cannot adapt to all operating conditions. In this work, a magnetorheological fluid–based semi-active lead–lag damper is proposed to offer controllable damping. Two nonlinear control strategies are reported to operate the voltage to be supplied to the magnetorheological damper. The first strategy is a model-based control using dynamic inversion. The second is a fuzzy logic control integrated with a particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimize the control parameters. Both control strategies are shown to be effective in eliminating ground resonance. Unlike bang–bang control, the prescribed control algorithms can make use of complete voltage level available in the magnetorheological damper with smooth voltage updates. A comparative study of the controller performances is made through appropriate performance indices and system responses. Finally, the most optimum control strategy to mitigate ground resonance is inferred.

An Analytical Method for Coaxial Helicopter Ground Resonance

A time-frequency analytical method is presented to analyze physical mechanism of coaxial helicopter ground resonance. Eigenvalue calculation and numerical integration of disturbance equations of motions are used to obtain modal characters and time-domain response characters of coaxial helicopter ground resonance, and the interaction between rotors and body is revealed according to response of various DOFs. The analysis results show that regressive lag mode with upper rotor character is the most instability mode. In dynamic instability region, coaxial helicopter ground resonance is mainly due to energy transferred between periodic lag motion of upper rotor and body roll rotation. For this instability mode, energy transferred between periodic lag motion of lower rotor and body roll rotation is also existed, and it can enhance ground resonance instability of coaxial helicopter.

On the controllers' design to stabilize ground resonance helicopter

Ground resonance (GR) in helicopters is a potentially catastrophic instability commonly caused by coalescence of the regressive cyclic blade lag mode with the fuselage motion in certain rotor speed ranges. It can limit the helicopter operational envelope and the design of this type of vehicle can become a difficult task. Although a broad class of actuators allows the use of active and semi-active techniques to design feedback-based control systems, a limited number of works in the literature introduce formulations to compute the controller gain to suppress this phenomenon. Also, commonly, a control approach defines a feedback, particularly to a specific rotor speed. In this context, this work introduces an alternative methodology to design an active control system to stabilize GR of a helicopter. The proposed approach can suppress this instability in all rotor speed ranges by using only one control gain. Two strategies are proposed based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). The Lyapunov stability criteria are used and the unstable rotor speed is considered as an uncertain parameter to define an associated convex space. Using convex optimization, a robust control gain is computed until all the unstable rotor speed range is stabilized. Numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of this methodology. The results confirm the viability of the proposed approach to design active and semi-active controllers.

A simulation investigation of helicopter ground resonance phenomenon

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a simulation method applied for investigation of helicopter ground resonance phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach The considered physical model of helicopter standing on ground with rotating rotor consists of fuselage and main transmission gear treated as stiff bodies connected by elastic elements. The fuselage is supported on landing gear modeled by spring-damper units. The main rotor blades are treated as set of elastic axes with lumped masses distributed along blade radius. Due to Galerkin method, parameters of blades motion are assumed as a combination of bending and torsion eigen modes. A Runge–Kutta method is applied to solve equations of motions of rotor blades and helicopter fuselage. Findings The presented simulation method may be applied in preliminary stage of helicopter design to avoid ground resonance by proper selection of landing gear units and blade damper characteristics. Practical implications Ground resonance may occur in form of violently increasing mutual oscillations of helicopter fuselage and lead-lag motion of rotor blades. According to changes of stiffness and damping characteristics, simulations show stable behavior or arising oscillations of helicopter. The effects of different blade balance or defect of blade damper are predicted. Originality/value The simulation method may help to determine the envelope of safe operation of helicopter in phase of take-off or landing. The effects of additional disturbances as results of blades pitch control as swashplate deflection are introduced.