State-Space Rotor Aeroelastic Modeling for Real-Time Helicopter Flight Simulation

This paper introduces a new approach for the identification of linear state-space models of dynamical systems of arbitrary complexity. The identification procedure is described and applied for modeling aeroelastic response of helicopter main rotors. With the aim of developing a tool that might be conveniently applied for real-time simulations of helicopter flight dynamics, the state-space model considered is a reduced-order description of loads transmitted to the airframe due to hub motion and blade pitch controls. In order to validate the proposed approach, loads from the state-space, reduced-order model are compared with those predicted by the complete full-state, nonlinear rotor model for prescribed helicopter maneuvers.