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ISBN 978-84-15914-12-9 2015 Comit Espaol de Automtica de la IFAC (CEA-IFAC) 473
Salvador Castillo-Rivera
The School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. The City University London. United Kingdom,
email: Salvador.Castillo-Rivera.1@city.ac.uk
M. Tomas-Rodriguez
The School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. The City University London. United Kingdom,
email: Maria.Tomas-Rodriguez.1@city.ac.uk
The helicopter has six degrees of freedom: three decreased. Because all blades are acting
translations along the (X, Y, Z) axes and three simultaneously in this case, or collectively, this is
rotations around the same axes. The model presented known as collective feather and allows the rotorcraft
in this paper is based in previous works developed by to rise/fall vertically. Additionally to this control, for
the authors (see [2], [3], [4], [10], [14]). achieving forward, backward and sideways flight, a
different additional change of feather is required. The
2.1 FUSELAGE feather on each individual blade is increased at the
same selected point on its circular pathway. This is
The fuselage is the rotorcraft's main body section that known as cyclic feather or cyclic control. Blade
holds crew and passengers, amongst other. Its feather control is achieved through linkage of the
degrees of freedom are the lateral and longitudinal blade to a swashplate.
translation in the horizontal plane X-Y axis, vertical
translation (Z axis) and rotation about these same 2.3 TAIL ROTOR
axes corresponding to yaw, pitch and roll.
The tail rotor is mounted in perpendicular to the main
2.2 MAIN ROTOR rotor. It counteracts the torque and the yaw motion
that the main rotor disc naturally produces. In
The role of the main rotor is to support the aircraft's accordance to Newton's third law of action and
weight, as it generates the lift force. It allows to keep reaction, the fuselage tends to rotate on the opposite
the helicopter suspended in the air and provides the direction to the main rotor's blades as a reaction of
control that allows to follow a prescribed trajectory the torque that appears (see Figure 1).
in the various spatial directions by changing altitude
and executing turns. It transfers prevailingly
aerodynamic forces and moments from the rotating
blades to the non-rotating frame (fuselage). The
blades are kept in uniform rotational motion
(rotational speed ), by a shaft torque from the
engine. A common design solution adopted in the
development of the helicopter is to use hinges at the
blades roots that allow free motion of the blade
normal to and in the plane of the disc. The most
common of these hinges is the flap hinge which
allows the blade to flap, this is, to move in a plane
containing the blade and the shaft, of the disc plane,
about either the actual flap hinge or in some other
cases, the flap hinge is substituted by a region of
structural flexibility at the root of the blade. The flap
hinge is more frequently designed to be a short
distance from the centre line. This is termed an
"offset" (eR), and it offers the designer a number of Figure 1: Tail rotor counteracting the torque induced
important advantages. by the main rotor rotation.
A blade which is free to flap, experiences large This torque must be counteracted and/or controlled
Coriolis moments in the plane of rotation and a before any type of flight is possible. Two anti-torque
further hinge (called lag) is provided to relieve these pedals allow the pilot to compensate for torque
moments. This degree of freedom produces blade variance by providing a means of changing pitch
motion on the same plane as the disc. In presence of (angle of attack) of the tail rotor blades. This
aerodynamic loads this degree of freedom generates provides heading and directional control in hover and
the blades drag force. at low airspeeds. Driven by the main rotor at a
constant ratio, the tail rotor produces thrust in a
A blade can also feather around an axis parallel to the horizontal plane opposite to torque reaction
blade span. Blade feather motions are necessary to developed by the main rotor. Since the main rotor
control the aerodynamic lift developed and, in torque varies during flight when power changes are
forward motion of the helicopter, to allow the made, it is necessary to vary the thrust of the tail
advancing blade to have a lower angle of incidence rotor. A significant part of the engine power is
than the retreating blade and thereby to balance the required to drive the tail rotor, especially during
lift across the craft. In order to be able to climb up, operations when maximum power is used. Any
the feather angle needs to be increased. On the other change in engine power output produces a change in
hand, in order to descend, the blade's feather angle is the torque effect.
Actas de las XXXVI Jornadas de Automtica, 2 - 4 de septiembre de 2015. Bilbao
ISBN 978-84-15914-12-9 2015 Comit Espaol de Automtica de la IFAC (CEA-IFAC) 475
There is a consequence of the use of a rotating frame Figure 6: Fuselage's X axis spectrogram in hover
of reference that affects vibration frequencies created flight conditions.
in the rotor and transmitted to the fuselage. The
frequencies generated in the rotor may contain the Similar analysis is carried out for the oscillations
rotational frequency of the rotor and the external appearing on the fuselage's Y axis (see Figure 7).
perturbation frequency [15]. The three predominant frequencies of these
vibrations appear in the spectrogram in Figure 8.
In order to analyze the vibrations appearing on the These are approximately 7.6 Hz which are caused by
fuselage, the Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) the main rotor blades flap, the second frequency is
is used. approximately 15.2 Hz, this value is twice the main
rotor flap frequency and the third frequency is around
A hover flight simulation is done; the simulations are 37.1 Hz, it is associated to the tail rotor flap motion.
carried out for 50 seconds, although the results
plotted in figures 5, 7, 9 and 11 show the first 5
seconds only, for clarity of the view. The height is h
= 250 m and the main rotor's collective feather angle
is 0.175 rad and tail rotor's collective feather angle is
also 0.175 rad. Figure 5, shows the fuselage's
oscillations (vibrations) on the X axis during hover
flight for 5 seconds. Figure 6, shows the
corresponding spectrogram obtained for this
simulation. Various predominant frequencies which
come from the main rotor loads (approximately 7.6
Hz) can be seen, this is the flap frequency. There is a
second predominant frequency (approximately 15.2
Hz) this is twice the flap frequency and a third
predominant frequency is found at around 37.1 Hz,
this frequency coincides with the tail rotor blades
flap frequency. Figure 7: Vibrations on the fuselage's Y axis for
hover flight.
Actas de las XXXVI Jornadas de Automtica, 2 - 4 de septiembre de 2015. Bilbao
ISBN 978-84-15914-12-9 2015 Comit Espaol de Automtica de la IFAC (CEA-IFAC) 478
the inertial forces produced by the flap and lag early stage and the authors expect to develop further
motions of the blade [1]. analogies with experimental results in future work.
References
Figure 12: Fuselage vibrations Spectrogram on the Y [1] Bramwell, A. R. S., Done, G., Balmford, D.
axis for mbl1 = 31.06 kg, mbl2 = 31.26 kg, mbl3 = (2001) Bramwell's Helicopter Dynamics.
29.96 kg and mbl4 = 31.16 kg and on the tail rotor Butterworth-Heinemann.
they are; mbltl1 = 6.212 kg and mbltl2 = 6.222 kg.
[2] Castillo-Rivera, S. (2014) Advanced Modelling
of Helicopter Nonlinear Dynamics and
7 CONCLUSIONS Aerodynamics. PhD Thesis. School of Engineering
and Mathematical Sciences. City University London.
The helicopter model under study is on Sikorsky [3] Castillo-Rivera, S., Tomas-Rodriguez, M.,
configuration, the model reproduces the dynamic Marichal-Plasencia, G., N. (2014) Helicopter Main
behaviour of a helicopter, which is capable to Rotor Vibration Analysis with Varying Rotating
transmit perturbations from the main rotor to the Speed. XXXV Jornadas de Automatica. pp. 34-41.
fuselage in form of vibrations. The model has been ISBN-13: 978-84-697-5089-6.
implemented in VehicleSim, a program allows to
define the systems as composition of several bodies [4] Castillo-Rivera, S., Tomas-Rodriguez, M.,
and ligatures by using a parental relationship Marichal, G.,N., Lpez, A. (2013) Estudio de la
parent/child structure. interaccin del fuselaje y el movimiento de aleteo de
las palas del rotor principal en un helicptero.
This work has presented a helicopter aerodynamic XXXIV Jornadas de Automatica. pp. 514-521. ISBN
model in which the blade element theory has been 978-84-616-5063-7.
used for implementation hover flight. This is
important in order to study and analyze the vibrations [5] Ferrer, R., Krysinski, T., Aubourg, P., Bellizi, S.
appearing in the fuselage as a consequence of (2001). New Methods for Rotor Tracking and
aerodynamic load under these flying conditions. Balance Tuning and Defect Detection Applied to
Various tests under the action of these conditions Eurocopter Products American Helicopter Society
were carried out in order to study pure vibrations 57th Annual Forum, Washington, DC, May 9-11.
appearing on the fuselage roll and pitch axes.
[6] http://www.carsim.com/products/supporting/
In hover flight and under unbalance of masses on vehiclesim/index.php.
both rotors, fuselage vibrations spectrograms were
obtained and analyzed by using a short time Fourier [7] Johnson, W. (1980) Helicopter Theory.
transform process, various cases were considered, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
when the aerodynamic load for hover flight was
included in the dynamic helicopter model, the [8] Keysan, O., Ertan, H. Higher Order Rotor Slot
obtained results match those predicted by theoretical Harmonics for Rotor Speed & Position Estimation.
approaches. In addition to this, these vibrations were 12th International Conference on Optimization of
compared to dynamic vibrations generated with the Electrical and Electronic Equipment, OPTIM. 978-1-
same helicopter model in absence of the aerodynamic 4244-7040-4.
load. As a consequence, the spectrograms were also
studied and these showed a reasonable discrepancy [9] Leishman, J. G. (2007) Principles of Helicopter
according to the expected behaviour introduced by Aerodynamics. Cambridge University Press.
the aerodynamic model. These results are still on an
Actas de las XXXVI Jornadas de Automtica, 2 - 4 de septiembre de 2015. Bilbao
ISBN 978-84-15914-12-9 2015 Comit Espaol de Automtica de la IFAC (CEA-IFAC) 480