Adaptive Failure Compensation of a Single Main-Rotor Helicopter

This paper develops an adaptive control strategy for failure compensation of a single main-rotor helicopter. The adaptive controller addresses the problem of instability due to failure in the main rotor or tail rotor assemblies, or unexpected variations in thrust or yaw due to damage to the rotor blades. An abstracted model of the helicopter is used for the development of the adaptive control laws. The effects of instability due to damage to the helicopter are modeled. A set of adaptive controllers are developed to stabilize the helicopter's states under failure. Simulation results establish the efficacy of the adaptive control scheme over the conventional control laws in providing stability.