The helicopter possesses the unrivaled capacity for vertical takeoff and landing which has made the helicopter suitable for numerous tasks such as carrying passengers and equipment, providing air medical services, firefighting, and other military and civil tasks. The nature of the aerodynamic environment surrounding the helicopter gives rise to a significant amount of vibration to its whole body. Among different sources of vibrations, the main rotor blade is the major contributor. The dynamic characteristics of the hingeless rotor consisting of elastic blades are of particular interest because of the strongly coupled equations of motion. The elastic rotor blades are subjected to coupled flapping, lead-lag, and torsional (triply coupled) deflections. Once these deflections exceed the maximum allowable level, the structural integrity of the rotor blade is affected leading to the ultimate failure. The maximum deflection that a blade can undergo for a specific operating condition needs to be estimated. Therefore, in this study, the triply coupled free and forced response of the Bo 105 hingeless, composite helicopter rotor blade is investigated at hovering and forward flights. At first, a model of the composite cross-section of the rotor blade is proposed for which a semi-analytical procedure is developed to estimate the sectional properties. These properties are used in the mathematical model of the free vibration of the rotor blade having the proposed cross-section to solve for the natural frequencies and the mode shapes. The aerodynamic loadings from the strip theory are used to estimate the time-varying forced response of the rotor blade for hovering and forward flights. The large flapping and inflow angles are introduced in the mathematical model of the forward flight and the corresponding nonlinear mathematical model requires a numerical solution technique. Therefore, a generalization of the method of lines is performed to develop a robust numerical solution in terms of time-varying deflections and velocities. The effect of the unsteady aerodynamics at the forward flight is included in the mathematical model to estimate the corresponding dynamic response. Both the analytical and the numerical models are validated by finite element results and the convergence study for the free vibration is performed.

Helicopter rotor system operates in a highly dynamic and unsteady aerodynamic environment leading to severe vibratory loads on the rotor system. Repeated exposure to these severe loading conditions can induce damage in the composite rotor blade which may lead to a catastrophic failure. Therefore, an interest in the structural health monitoring (SHM) of the composite rotor blades has grown markedly in recent years. Two important issues are addressed in this thesis; (1) structural modeling and aeroelastic analysis of the damaged rotor blade and (2) development of a model based rotor health monitoring system. The effect of matrix cracking, the first failure mode in composites, is studied in detail for a circular section beam, box-beam and two-cell airfoil section beam. Later, the effects of further progressive damages such as debonding/delamination and fiber breakage are considered for a two-cell airfoil section beam representing a stiff-inplane helicopter rotor blade. It is found that the stiffness decreases rapidly in the initial phase of matrix cracking but becomes almost constant later as matrix crack saturation is reached. Due to matrix cracking, the bending and torsion stiffness losses at the point of matrix crack saturation are about 6-12 percent and about 25-30 percent, respectively. Due to debonding/delamination, the bending and torsion stiffness losses are about 6-8 percent and about 40-45 percent after matrix crack saturation, respectively. The stiffness loss due to fiber breakage is very rapid and leads to the final failure of the blade. An aeroelastic analysis is performed for the damaged composite rotor in forward flight and the numerically simulated results are used to develop an online health monitoring system. For fault detection, the variations in rotating frequencies, tip bending and torsion response, blade root loads and strains along the blade due to damage are investigated. It is found that peak-to-peak values of blade response and loads provide a good global damage indicator and result in considerable data reduction. Also, the shear strain is a useful indicator to predict local damage. The structural health monitoring system is developed using the physics based models to detect and locate damage from simulated noisy rotor system data. A genetic fuzzy system (GFS) developed for solving the inverse problem of detecting damage from noise contaminated measurements by hybridizing the best features of fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms. Using the changes in structural measurements between the damaged and undamaged blade, a fuzzy system is generated and the rule-base and membership functions optimized by genetic algorithm. The GFS is demonstrated using frequency and mode shape based measurements for various beam type structures such as uniform cantilever beam, tapered beam and non-rotating helicopter blade. The GFS is further demonstrated for predicting the internal state of the composite structures using an example of a composite hollow circular beam with matrix cracking damage mode. Finally, the GFS is applied for online SHM of a rotor in forward flight. It is found that the GFS shows excellent robustness with noisy data, missing measurements and degrades gradually in the presence of faulty sensors/measurements. Furthermore, the GFS can be developed in an automated manner resulting in an optimal solution to the inverse problem of SHM. Finally, the stiffness degradation of the composite rotor blade is correlated to the life consumption of the rotor blade and issues related to damage prognosis are addressed.

L'optimisation des rotors d'hélicoptère, tant en termes de forme, de structure interne, ou de performance aérodynamique conduit à explorer de nouveaux types de design pour les pales. L'emploi massif de matériaux composites, le recours à des formes courbes et non plus simplement droites ou encore l'ajustement du vrillage aérodynamique font partie des pistes explorées. Ces nouveaux concepts de pales font apparaitre des comportements élastiques complexes où la torsion, la flexion et l'allongement axial viennent se coupler entre eux. L'étude de ces couplages est réalisée dans le repère tournant afin de pouvoir y intégrer tous les effets inhérents à la rotation des pales. Un élément fini de poutre droite non-linéaire et haute précision est formulé dans ce mémoire afin de répondre aux besoins de modélisation tant pour la prédiction des déformations quasi-statiques sous charge aérodynamique et centrifuge que pour la réalisation d'études dynamiques et de stabilité sur les pales. Le modèle a pour but d'être implémenté dans un code de calcul global de simulation d'hélicoptère et se doit donc de proposer un compromis acceptable entre la précision, la robustesse et le temps de calcul. La validation du modèle proposé s'appuie sur des études analytiques, numériques et expérimentales. La grande précision de l'élément fini proposé est démontrée sur des pales de dernière génération. Il est maintenant attendu que le couplage de ce modèle élastique avec les modèles aérodynamiques les plus avancés permette d'améliorer sensiblement la précision des outils de simulation, en particulier lors de l'étude de phénomènes instables dont la maitrise est indispensable au vol de l'hélicoptère. / Structural, shape and performances optimization in helicopter rotor leads to design composite blades initially curved and twisted. This design yields a highly coupled behavior between torsion, longitudinal and bending motions of blades. Besides, dynamic studies of blades have to be performed in the rotational frame, so that all rotatory effects could be siezed by the modeling. A highly accurate non-linear straight beam finite element is proposed to predict the static deformation under aerodynamic and centrifugal loads and achieve dynamic and stability analysis. This elastic model is to be implemented in a comprehensive rotorcraft analysis code, which means accuracy, reliability and calculation time compromise. Model validation is based on analytical, numerical and experimental investigations. The developed model reveals to be very accurate for new blade design including important twist angle and initially curved shape. It is expected to improve prediction quality for full helicopter simulation tools, undergoing strong coupling with advanced aerodynamic model