Control strategies for damage mitigation of rotorcraft components and consequently their life extension mainly take the form of Load Alleviation Control by reducing peak-to-peak component dynamic loads. This results in a conservative approach and also has a significant effect on maneuver performance. Load limiting control offers an opportunity to overcome this challenge, provided an effective strategy is used to select which harmonic load should be limited and by how much. In this work, we study the sensitivity of a localized damage parameter to limiting different harmonic loads by introducing a damage mitigation control metric, which we call the integrity ratio that also includes information about the effect of load limiting on the maneuver performance. We use a surrogate model for damage prediction and a load limiting control scheme to analyze the integrity ratio by conducting open-loop simulations. We also conduct threshold sensitivity studies to identify an appropriate threshold measure for load limiting. Our findings indicate that limiting the harmonic load with a higher integrity ratio helps in reducing damage growth along with preserving the maneuver capability. Depending on the allowable effect on maneuver, this metric can enable a less conservative damage-driven control strategy for extending the operational life of a component.
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