Patent — available for licensing
Improving VTOL Proprotor Stability
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft such as tiltrotors hold the promise to provide the next generation of air transport but are limited in their forward airspeeds due to complex, coupled rotor and wing dynamic instabilities. NASA Langley’s Advanced Generalized Predictive Control (AGPC) technology provides swashplate actuators with high-frequency control signals to stabilize dynamic instabilities allowing envelope expansion and to reduce vibration anywhere in the envelope. Compared to existing Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) systems, AGPC is self-adaptive and compares actual system behavior with that predicted by experimentally-derived system identification parameters. This methodology is unique in that modeling parameters are updated by observation of the operational controller and requires no or negligible excitation of the system in order for the adaptation to be successful.