An Energetic Approach to Aeroelastic Rotorcraft-Pilot Couplings Analysis

Abstract

This paper describes an energetic method using multibond graphs to model multi-physical systems. Its potential in building physical meaningful graphs that represent equivalent mathematical models of classic analytical approaches is shown. An application to the study of an aeroelastic rotorcraft-pilot coupling is studied by analyzing the passive pilot behavior in the cyclic control loop. A rotorcraft in hover flight is simulated and perturbed on its rolling motion axis. Depending on the rotorcraft characteristics air resonance may occur, and the pilot may involuntarily excite the cyclic lever, increasing the rolling motion of the fuselage to an unstable point. Future work will explore eventual alternative solutions to notch filters to avoid passive pilot reinjection at low fuselage frequency modes by controlling for example the actuators of the swashplate through model inversion using the bond graph method