A Novel Emergent State Control Law for an Integrated Helicopter/Turboshaft Engine System

A two-layer robust control scheme is proposed to get a better response ability for emergency maneuvers of helicopter. Note that the power used in ascending flight is the main coupling between helicopter and its turboshaft engines; therefore vertical flight control is separated from conventional helicopter control loops and combined with fuel flow and turbine bleeding to new control loops denoted as an inner layer, whereas the mission level flight control is as the out layer. A conclusion in global asymptotically tracking for devising this new scheme is firstly derived from a Generalized Gronwall-Bellman approach. Due to this integrated designing, not only is the helicopter better controlled, but also much better power rapid tracking is realized for engines. Simulations are conducted to validate the new scheme in emergent ascending and descending flights, and the results illustrate that the response time of the closed-loop system is dramatically reduced when compared to the traditional one. Moreover, the presented system also has better dynamic performance under inferences.