Experimental black-box dynamic modelling of a Flexible Manoeuvring System

Flexible Manoeuvring Systems (FMS) have been recently used in a wide range of applications. This paper addresses the problem of modeling the Twin Rotor Multi-Input Multi-Output System (TRMS) as one of the most significant issues in FMS control. In spite of their advantageous characteristics, modeling a Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) FMS is considered a challenging engineering problem. In this work, a black-box modeling approach is introduced with the objective of obtaining an accurate model representation for the TRMS. Experiments are established in a real-time lab-scale helicopter system, TRMS, and input/output datasets are registered for further off-line computations. Obtained models are validated in both time and frequency domains and results have been investigated in details. Then a comparative study between different modelling methodologies applied to the problem of the TRMS modelling is introduced and results showed significant advantages in the introduced modelling approach against other approaches.