Modeling and control of a helicopter slung load system

Date

2024-9

Author

Güngören, Ömer Oğuzhan

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Carrying slung loads has always been an important mission for both civil and military helicopters. Considering that with a proper implementation of a slung load system, cargo and ammunition delivery, search and rescue operations and even fire intervention can be performed very effectively, this is not surprising. However, beside these benefits, slung load systems bring about problems related to the stability and handling quality of the helicopter, which can also affect control of the helicopter adversely and increase the pilot workload. This study aims to provide a proper slung load modeling approach and a control strategy with the capability of yielding efficient slung load damping. Development of the mathematical model is based on generic Newton-Euler equations. Regarding the slung load control, several schemes are considered, including input shaping, delayed feedback control, angular rate feedback control and model predictive control. Based on the simulation results, proposed control algorithm with optimal characteristics is selected as the combination of input shaping and model predictive control. Moreover, a Kalman Filter algorithm is generated such that slung load states can be efficiently estimated with measured helicopter states. Given that there is a strong coupling between the helicopter and the slung load, the study considers the development of a full nonlinear helicopter model and implementation of a flight control system as well. The flight control system of the helicopter involves inner loop-outer loop control architecture. The proposed flight control system is evaluated by considering the maximum overshoot and settling time characteristics as well as the robustness.

Subject Keywords

Helicopter, Slung load, Input shaping, Delayed feedback control, Angular rate feedback, Model predictive control

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111359

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis