Improved Real-time Helicopter Flight Dynamics Modelling

The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies has a number of previously developed real-time helicopter models for piloted simulations. An area of concern with physics-based helicopter models is that they often have an inaccurate off-axis response to cyclic control inputs compared to flight test data. To explain the cause of this problem, several theories have been put forth in the literature concerning which aspects are modelled incorrectly or not at all, including blade elasticity, rotor wake distortion and curvature, and unsteady aerodynamic effects. In this thesis these modelling improvements were implemented and their effectiveness evaluated. To include blade elasticity, a rotor model was developed using a Ritz expansion approach with constrained elastic modes. The effect of including these features on the on-axis and off-axis response of the UTIAS helicopter models was examined. The various improvements were successful in altering the off-axis response, with notable improvements in some areas, without disrupting the on-axis response. In some conditions, the magnitude of change due to flexibility was greater than differences noted due to dynamic wake distortion or unsteady aerodynamics. The best results were obtained when blade flexibility and wake distortion were used together, which is also the most physically accurate model. The impact of these changes was also evaluated from a pilot-in-the-loop perspective, quantifying the perceived changes using simulation fidelity ratings. Since this is a newly developed metric, the simulator was first evaluated using the original baseline vehicle models. Through this process, experience could be gained in the usage of the fidelity rating scale, while also examining what effect changes to the dynamics had on the overall simulator fidelity rating obtained. While an improved match to flight test data was found to lead to a higher rated fidelity, there was a limit to how high these improvements could increase the fidelity rating. A number of the possible contributors to the ratings achieved were further explored, which for the UTIAS Flight Research Simulator primarily include the motion system fidelity and the collimated stereoscopic visual environment.Ph.D