Active Vibration Control of a Helicopter Rotor Blade by Using a Linear Quadratic Regulator

Active vibration control is a widely implemented method for helicopter vibration control. Due to the significant progress in the microelectronics, this technique outperforms the traditional passive control technique due to the weight penalty and lack of adaptability for the changing flight conditions. In this paper, an optimal controller is designed to attenuate the helicopter rotor blade vibration. The mathematical model of the triply coupled vibration of the rotating cantilever beam is used to develop the state-space model of an isolated rotor blade. The required natural frequencies are determined by the modified Galerkin method and only the principal aerodynamic forces acting on the structure are considered. Linear quadratic regulator is designed to achieve the vibration reduction at the optimum level and the controller is tuned for the hovering and forward flight.