Innovative Rotorcraft Flight Control Systems Options to Enhance Shipboard Operations

This SBIR is aimed at developing an advanced and unified rotorcraft flight control system design and testing tool that can account for the effects of both the ship motion and the ship airwake. The development will integrate the various aspects of the shipboard simulation and analysis to provide a unified sea-based rotorcraft flight control design and evaluation environment. The unified control design and evaluation environment will facilitate (1) an accurate generation of the control plant model, (2) the development of a shipboard disturbance model in order to take into account the effect of the turbulent ship airwake in the control design, (3) the performance of advanced control options design, and (4) the comprehensive testing and validation of the flight control system through both non-real time engineering analysis and pilot-in-the-loop real time simulation. The initial Phase I results demonstrate that advanced flight control options can be developed to effectively enhance shipboard rotorcraft controls with significantly reduced pilot workload. The initial development also shows that a unified shipboard control option design programming environment can be created by integrating the control design functions and algorithms into an existing comprehensive rotorcraft simulation program, FLIGHTLAB. The unified control design environment thus formed can effectively support a full cycle of rotorcraft shipboard control design and test and evaluation through non-real time analysis and real time pilot-in-the-loop simulation. The proposed Phase II work will implement the Phase I prototype and thoroughly test it on both single main rotor helicopter and on modern tiltrotors under shipboard operating conditions.