NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF STABILITY AND CONTROL FOR AN F-16 CONFIGURATION

A synthetic method for nonlinear analysis of flight stability and control is presented. In this method, the bifurcation analysis is used to predict the aircraft global stability. Motions from the bifurcate points or equilibrium surfaces are calculated with a fourth-order Runge-Kutta integration scheme which is also recast in the form of state disturbance propagation matrices. The eigenvalues of these matrices provide a means to predict the variation of system stability with time. In addition, necessary control inputs to satisfy specified response characteristics in terms of frequencies and dampings can also be estimated by using these state disturbance propagation matrices. Example calculations for an F-16 configuration are presented.