Conceptual Flexible Aircraft Model for Modeling, Analysis and Control Studies

In this paper, we present models of conceptual flexible aircraft suitable for aerodynamic, flight mechanics and flight control studies. The aircraft is representative of a medium size civil jet transport and it is developed in three configurations of increasing flexibility. The model integrates 6 degrees of freedom rigid and structural dynamics, which are obtained via finite elements and modal decomposition (up to 9 flexible modes are considered). An incremental unsteady aerodynamic model is determined via the Doublet Lattice method. The aircraft possesses 8 aerodynamic control effectors, suitable for control of the rigid and flexible modes. A rigid body aerodynamic model is also considered. A brief numeric discussion about flutter is also presented.

[1]  D. McLean,et al.  Gust-alleviation control systems for aircraft , 1978 .

[2]  Gertjan Looye,et al.  Comparison of Different LMI Synthesis Techniques to Design a Flexible Aircraft Gust Response Control Law , 2003 .

[3]  Nabil Aouf,et al.  A gain scheduling approach for a flexible aircraft , 2002, Proceedings of the 2002 American Control Conference (IEEE Cat. No.CH37301).

[4]  R Waszak Martin,et al.  Modeling and Model Simplification of Aeroelastic Vehicles: An Overview , 1992 .

[5]  Carlos E. S. Cesnik,et al.  Nonlinear Flight Dynamics of Very Flexible Aircraft , 2005 .

[6]  S. Chiu,et al.  Fuzzy logic for control of roll and moment for a flexible wing aircraft , 1991, IEEE Control Systems.

[7]  Eugene Lavretsky,et al.  High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) flight simulation and analysis software development , 1998 .

[8]  Maher N. Bismarck-Nasr.  Structural Dynamics in Aeronautical Engineering , 1999 .

[9]  David K. Schmidt,et al.  A Simulation Study of the Flight Dynamics of Elastic Aircraft , 1987 .

[10]  Leonard Meirovitch,et al.  Unified theory for the dynamics and control of maneuvering flexible aircraft , 2004 .

[11]  S M Joshi,et al.  On Longitudinal Control of High Speed Aircraft in the Presence of Aeroelastic Modes , 1996 .

[12]  Pedro Paglione,et al.  Dynamics and Control of a Flexible Aircraft , 2008 .

[13]  T. Livet,et al.  PARAMETER ROBUST FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A FLEXIBLE AIRCRAFT , 1994 .

[14]  D. K. Henderson,et al.  A neural network-based approach to active structural mode suppression for flexible transport aircraft , 1999, Proceedings of the 1999 American Control Conference (Cat. No. 99CH36251).

[15]  R. D. Milne.  Dynamics of the deformable aeroplane , 1964 .

[16]  J. B. De Jonge,et al.  A MATLAB program to study gust loading on a simple aircraft model , 1997 .

[17]  Nhan Nguyen,et al.  Integrated Flight Dynamic Modeling of Flexible Aircraft with Inertial Force-Propulsion-Aeroelastic Coupling , 2008 .

[18]  Xiaohong Li,et al.  Application of Reduced-Order-Models to Robust Control of the Dynamics of a Flexible Aircraft , 2003 .

[19]  Thomas A. Zeiler,et al.  Nonlinear simulation of a flexible aircraft in maneuvering flight , 1987 .

[20]  Nabil Aouf,et al.  H2 and H-optimal gust load alleviation for a flexible aircraft , 2000 .

[21]  Guilhem Puyou,et al.  Flight Control Law Design for a Flexible Aircraft: Limits of Performance , 2006 .

[22]  Jean-Marc Biannic,et al.  Reliable computation of the robustness margin for a flexible aircraft , 2001 .

[23]  David K. Schmidt,et al.  Flight dynamics of aeroelastic vehicles , 1988 .

[24]  Nabil Aouf,et al.  Model and controller reduction for flexible aircraft preserving robust performance , 2002, IEEE Trans. Control. Syst. Technol..

[25]  Mikhail Goman,et al.  Computation of controllability regions for unstable aircraft dynamics. , 2004 .

[26]  R. Cavin,et al.  Hamilton's principle - Finite-element methods and flexible body dynamics , 1977 .

[27]  Nabil Aouf,et al.  H/sub 2/ and H/sub /spl infin//-optimal gust load alleviation for a flexible aircraft , 2000, Proceedings of the 2000 American Control Conference. ACC (IEEE Cat. No.00CH36334).

[28]  David K. Schmidt,et al.  Modeling and Simulation of Flexible Flight Vehicles , 2001 .