INTEGRATED ROTOR-FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM OPTIMIZATION WITH AEROELASTIC AND HANDLING QUALITIES CONSTRAINTS

This paper contains the results of a study concerning the integrated optimization of rotor and flight control system with simultaneous aeroelastic and handling qualities constraints. A representative subset of the ADS-33C handling qualities specification is reformulated into inequality constraint form. A simplified design model is used, consisting of three rotor design variables and of five control system design variables for each flight condition. The design space defined by the combined aeroelastic and handling qualities constraints is not convex. It is not possible to satisfy the entire set of aeroelastic and handling qualities constraints using just the three rotor design parameters of this study. If the design is optimized for just one flight condition, optimizing simultaneously the rotor and the flight control system leads to substantially better designs than by sequentially optimizing the rotor first and the flight control system next. The designs obtained using the two optimization strategies are quite different, confirming that rotor and flight control system are strongly coupled.