CEAS EuroGNC 2026
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Constrained Model Reference Control for Helicopter Upper Modes
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| Julian Schließus |
Graduate Student, University of Stuttgart, 70174 Stuttgart, Germany. | | Christian Fischer |
Development Engineer, 80331 Munich, Germany. | | Süleyman Özkurt |
Research Associate, University of Stuttgart, Institute of Flight Mechanics and Controls, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany. | | Torbjørn Cunis |
Lecturer, University of Stuttgart, Institute of Flight Mechanics and Controls, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany. |
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| Abstract:
Model reference control (MRC) is a widely used approach in helicopter flight control to impose desired dynamic behaviour - such as specified damping and natural frequencies - on the actual nonlinear and complex helicopter system. In this work, the entire closed-loop system consists of a trajectory planner, which defines simple and well-behaved reference dynamics, and the actual flight control law, which ensures that the helicopter follows these reference trajectories. The trajectory planner generates a trajectory from the target flight state specified by the pilot, e.g., the vertical speed, delivering feasible reference states for the lower-level controller. For unconstrained trajectories, the closed-loop stability can be verified using conventional linear control engineering methods such as, e.g., the Hurwitz criterion. However, these methods are not applicable if the trajectories are constrained by state limits such as the maximum and minimum vertical speed of the helicopter. For constrained trajectories, nonlinearities such as saturations are often inserted into the control loops to consider the helicopter's state limits. These nonlinearities complicate the proof of stability, and thus an alternative approach is required for the stability analysis. In this work, an analytical approach is presented to generate a trajectory that respects input and state constraints while applying a linear control law with the help of the invariant set theory and linear control methods. The method is applied on a model of the Airbus H145 to analyse its control performance.
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| Keywords: Constrained Rotorcraft Control; Input and State Constraints; Linear Constrained Control; Maximal Control Invariant Set |
 View PDF CEAS-GNC-2026-088 doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-088 |
| Julian Schließus, Christian Fischer, Süleyman Özkurt, Torbjørn Cunis: Constrained Model Reference Control for Helicopter Upper Modes. Proceedings of the 2026 CEAS EuroGNC conference. Madrid, Spain. May 2026. doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-088.
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| BibTeX entry (UTF-8):
@Incollection{CEAS-GNC-2026-088,
author = {Schließus, Julian and Fischer, Christian and Özkurt, Süleyman and Cunis, Torbjørn},
title = {Constrained Model Reference Control for Helicopter Upper Modes},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 {CEAS EuroGNC} conference},
address = {Madrid, Spain},
month = may,
year = {2026},
doi = {10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-088}
}
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