Copyright © 2010 Ronaldo Vieira Cruz and Luiz Carlos Sandoval Góes. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This article focuses on the problem of parameter estimation of the uncoupled, linear, short-period aerodynamic derivatives of a “Twin Squirrel” helicopter in level flight and constant speed. A flight test campaign is described with respect to maneuver specification, flight test instrumentation, and experimental data collection used to estimate the aerodynamic derivatives. The identification problem is solved in the time domain using the output-error approach, with a combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Levenberg-Marquardt optimization algorithms. The advantages of this hybrid GA and gradient-search methodology in helicopter system identification are discussed.