Hybrid Approach for Rotorcraft Identification from Flight Data

The availability of suitable methods for rotorcraft model identification from flight data is a key factor to enhance the competitiveness of the rotorcraft industry in the development process of new vehicles. Indeed, reliable simulation models provided by the identification techniques can be used for the design and validation of the vehicle flight control system. It allows minimizing the number of in flight experimental tests and consequently reducing costs and risks related to flight testing. In this paper the complex problem of rotorcraft model identification is decomposed in simpler sub-problems and solved by means of multi-step hybrid time-frequency approach. The hybrid time-frequency approach allows exploiting the advantage of both time and frequency domains methods, maximizing the information content extracted from the flight data and obtaining an identified model applicable in the whole frequency range of interest. The proposed methodology was applied to simulated data of the UH60 Black Hawk generated using the FLIGHTLAB simulation environment both in hover and forward flight conditions. Preliminary results show the effectiveness of the proposed identification strategy in terms of convergence and capability of extracting from flight data relevant information on the vehicle dynamic behavior.