First Principle Approach to Modeling of Small Scale Helicopter

The establishment of global helicopter linear model is very precious and useful for the design of the linear control laws, since it is never afforded in the published literatures. In the first principle approach, the mathematical model was developed using basic helicopter theory accounting for particular characteristic of the miniature helicopter. No formal system identification procedures are required for the proposed model structure. The relevant published literatures however did not present the linear models required for the design of linear control laws. The paper presents a step by step development of linear model for small scale helicopter based on first-principle approach. Beyond the previous work in literatures, the calculation of the stability derivatives is presented in detail. A computer program is used to solve the equilibrium conditions and then calculate the change in aerodynamics forces and moments due to the change in each degree of freedom and control input. The detail derivation allows the comprehensive analysis of relative dominance of vehicle states and input variables to force and moment components. Hence it facilitates the development of minimum complexity small scale helicopter dynamics model.