Performance analysis of a small-scale unmanned helicopter under large wind disturbance

Large wind disturbance is harmful to the autonomous helicopters, especially to the small ones because of their low inertia and high cross-coupling effects among the multiple inputs. This paper has analyzed how the large wind disturbance would affect the performance of the small-scale unmanned autonomous helicopter (UAH) under the condition of hovering and forward flight. A group of polynomial functions were identified first according to the experiment data from the wind tunnel tests to estimate the variation of the total forces and moments caused by different large wind disturbances. Then, the wind resistance abilities of UAH are discussed based on further analysis of the wind tunnel experiment data. This paper has provided support to the controller design in order to attenuate large horizontal wind disturbances.