Linearized aeroservoelastic analysis of rotor-wing aircraft

A tool for the aeroservoelastic analysis of rotary-wing aircraft, including tiltrotors, is presented. Rather than developing yet an entirely new, monolithic rotorcraft aeroservoelastic simulation software, capable of providing all the modeling capabilities required by modern rotorcraft, each separate feature has been collected from well-known, reliable and possibly state-of-art sources and blended together in a general-purpose mathematical environment. The resulting intrinsic modularity allows to easily incorporate improved features as required by specific problems. In particular the tool can be very effective for aeroservoelastic stability analysis, development and tuning of dynamic controllers and investigation of aeroelastic coupling with Flight Control Systems. The implementation of state-space aircraft aeroservoelastic numerical models into a general purpose mathematical environment allows to exploit state-space based modern control theory approaches.