Integrated Flight Control Design and Multidisciplinary Optimization

Multi-disciplinary optimization has emerged as a key technology required to make increasingly more sophisticated electric and hybrid-electric aircraft that require advanced CONOPS such as urban air mobility and cargo delivery. Current MDO design results may take into account many disciplines in the design resulting in an optimized aircraft, only to discover controller limitations post-aircraft configuration lock related, resulting in less efficient, less capable and ultimately less safe aircraft. After decades of designing and flying flight controllers for new and existing types of hybrid and distributed propulsion aircraft, our goal is to get add a controllability component to aircraft multidisciplinary design optimization. Our controllability assessment tools can be used individually or together in an MDO/MDA framework to ensure the airplane is optimized for both aircraft performance and flight control control requirements. We leverage open-source software from OpenMDAO and can import models form OpenVSP and other sources. New UAM and UAS configurations provided significant advantages and are being pursued by the aerospace industry. Our software allows us to partner with aircraft makers to help develop their aircraft and then provide flight control solutions as a secondary output from our controllability assessment tools. Far too often, weve seen the aircraft OML locked and much later discovered aircraft flight envelope and CONOPS restrictions due to inability to control the aircraft. By co-designing the aircraft and the flight controller, we optimize both simultaneously, resulting in a design that closes for performance, CONOPS, failure conditions, and controllability within a significantly reduced timeline. The emergence of both the UAM and drone cargo markets has spawned many new and exciting aircraft configurations.  New concepts may discover late, after the OML is locked, the aircraft isn’t capable or is difficult to control, requiring significant changes and delays on the order of years.  We propose to develop a controllability assessment software tool that allows the aircraft to be designed within a multi-disciplinary optimization framework including flight control constraints.  We’ve included sub-optimization and constraints for the 8 challenging areas we’ve seen while developing flight controllers over the past 2 decades.  Our tool uses OpenMDAO as the backend, a modern software data analytics front-end and handles a wide range of aircraft, modeling tools, and flight control constraints.  Co-designing the aircraft with flight controller will provide flyable controller parameters and gains faster than ever before.  We are also developing a novel statistical aircraft database (ADB) based on Machine Learning to be able to better design and test controllers. 1. Provide an MDO/MDA tool to NASA for assessing conceptual design and existing designs, including all 8 controllability components 2. New development of two additional controllability components to address failure conditions and ride and handling qualities. 3. Create ability to handle different model fidelities Statistical Aerodynamics Database (ADB) based on Machine Learning, led by SUNY Buffalo partner Dr. Souma Chowdhury 4. Demonstrate the MDO framework on aircraft with different dynamics, including large rotors, and blown wings.   Test on NASA Tiltwing  concept >> Test on commercial partner Regent Craft blown wing seaglider Test on NASA Side-by-Side concept  >> Test on commercial partner Piasecki Aircraft PA-890 slowed-rotor compound EVTOL aircraft 5.  Develop and deliver ControlStar®,  a modern tool for designing and analyzing aircraft and an end-to-end aircraft design to flight control solution NASA will get: 1. All relevant development source code, mostly in python, 2.  Reference designs for the tiltwing, and side-by-side configurations 3. Royalty-free license for future versions and upgrades to the aircraft design for controllabilty tool connected to OpenMDO.

RVLT concepts or slight modifications to the current concepts will allow RVLT to provide NASA with additional key critical technical areas to focus on in the future.  New concepts can be quickly iterated and evaluated. AAM can use the controllability tools to understand what closed-loop performance is achievable to be able to form new CONOPS and infrastructure plans.   ARMD can use the controllability assessment tools to optimizing the use of motors, rotors and propulsion system powertrain with respect to controller use and limitations.  UAM and UAS markets have received significant investments on concept aircraft that may not be able to meet the proposed CONOPS or safety requirements.  These tools can be used to evaluate designs and pivot into plausible, but inadequate designs.  Technical due diligence could use the tools to compare and evaluate concepts for feasibility.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.