Advances in Rotorcraft System Identification

System identification can best be described as the extraction of system characteristics from measured flight test data. Therefore it provides an excellent tool for determining and improving mathematical models for a wide range of applications. The increasing need for accurate models for the design of high bandwidth control systems for rotorcraft has initiated a high interest in and a more intensive use of system identification. This development was supported by the AGARD FVP Working Group 18 on 'Rotorcraft System Identification', which brought together specialists from research organisations and industry, tasked with exploring the potential of this tool. In the Group, the full range of identification approaches was applied to dedicated helicopter flight-test-data including data quality checking and the determination and verification of flight mechanical models. It was mainly concentrated on the identification of six degrees of freedom rigid body models, which provide a realistic description of the rotorcraft dynamics for the lower and medium frequency range. The accomplishment of the Working Group has increased the demand for applying these techniques more routinely and, in addition, for extending the model order by including explicit rotor degrees of freedom. Such models also accurately characterize the higher frequency range needed for high bandwidth control system designs. In the specific case of the DLR In-Flight Simulator BO 105 ATTHeS, the application of the identified higher order models for the model-following control system was a major prerequisite for the obtained high simulation quality. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.