Longitudinal Dynamics and Adaptive Control Application for an Aeroelastic Generic Transport Model

This paper presents an aeroelastic model of longitudinal dynamics of a generic transport model (GTM). Aeroelasticity theory is used to develop an aeroelastic flight dynamic model of the flexible GTM to account for interactions between wing bending and torsion on aircraft performance and stability. The Galerkin’s method is used to implement a weak-form solution of the aeroelastic equations of the aircraft. The weak-form aeroelastic equations are then coupled with the longitudinal dynamic equations of the rigid-body aircraft to formulate an aeroelastic flight dynamic model. This model is then used to create a reduced-order state space model of the rigid-body longitudinal dynamics with the flexible-body dynamics represented as unmodeled dynamics. Matched uncertainty and wind gust disturbances are introduced in the model and is effectively addressed by two recently developed robust modification adaptive control methods: Optimal Control Modification and Adaptive Loop Recovery. Both methods demonstrate the effectiveness in reducing the effects of the uncertainty and wind gust disturbances.