On the Design and Development of a Multiple-Swashplate Control System for the Realization of Individual Blade Control (IBC) for Helicopters

This paper describes the DLR's patented multiple swashplate control system (META) as a new means of active rotor control significantly diverging from the currently existing approaches. A short overview of the state of the art in active rotor control and a comparison of the established concepts and META regarding their respective advantages and disadvantages are given. The concept, function, underlying principles and design of the essential components of the multiple swashplate control system are described in detail with particular attention to the new control laws for primary rotor control, Higher Harmonic Control (HHC) and Individual Blade Control (IBC) utilizing actuators in the nonrotating frame. Validation of those control laws is also performed using a kinematic simulation of the system. The integration of the system into the DLR's rotor test rig as well as future tests and applications like tip path plane (TPP) splitting and automatic in-flight tracking are also discussed.