Flight Control Development for the ARH-70 Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter Program

In July 2005, Bell Helicopter won the U.S. Army’s Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter competition to produce a replacement for the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior capable of performing the armed reconnaissance mission. To meet the contractual requirement that the ARH-70A have Level 1 handling qualities for the scout rotorcraft mission task elements defined by ADS-33E-PRF, Bell equipped the aircraft with their generic automatic flight control system (AFCS). Under the constraints of the tight ARH-70A schedule, the development team used modern system identification and control law optimization techniques to optimize the AFCS gains to simultaneously meet multiple handling qualities design criteria. This paper will show how linear modeling, control law optimization, and simulation were used to design a scout rotorcraft for the U.S. Army capable of meeting the Level 1 handling qualities requirement, while minimizing the amount of flight testing required for AFCS development and handling qualities evaluation of the ARH-70A.