Adaptive Linear Parameter Varying Control for Aeroservoelastic Suppression

Adaptive control offers an opportunity to fulfill present and future aircraft safety objectives though automated vehicle recovery while maintaining performance and stability requirements in the presence of unknown or varying operating environment. Future aircraft are a natural application of adaptive control. These aircraft will be more fuel efficient, have longer operating ranges though more flexible aircraft structures. This increased flexibility will result in structural modes being in the same frequency range as the rigid body modes. The traditional non-adaptive control design approach to address the aeroservoelastic (ASE) interaction of decoupling the rigid body and structural dynamics will not work. Furthermore, the application of adaptive control to these flexible aircraft may result in undesired ASE excitation leading to structural damage or failure. Hence an integrated flight control system is needed for gust load alleviation, flutter suppression and rigid body control of the aircraft which works in concert with the adaptive control system for improved resilience and safety. MUSYN proposes an integrated approach based on linear, parameter-varying (LPV) control to the design of the flight control, load alleviation and flutter suppression algorithms. The Phase I and Phase II research will focus on applying and extending LPV techniques to model, design, analyze and simulate control algorithms for flexible aircraft. The objective is to combine the integrated LPV flight control system with adaptive control to preserve rigid body performance during upsets while retaining the load alleviation and flutter suppression characteristics of the nominally augmented aircraft. Phase I will develop a prototype LPV framework for modeling, analysis, control and simulation and Phase II will develop a comprehensive LPV software tool suite.

Non-NASA commercial applications fall under two categories: (1) Uninhabited aerial systems (UASs) like SensorCraft, for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and (2) Space, automotive and ship transportation systems. MUSYN or the companies it has worked with have already demonstrated the application of LPV control techniques to aircraft, launch vehicles, automotive suspensions, trucks, missiles and underwater vehicles. All these systems are seeing increased aeroservoelastic coupling due to the push for more efficient, lightweight structures. The software tool develop in the SBIR addresses a unique need that is currently only being addressed by European aerospace companies using proprietary software tools. A Matlab based LPV Control Toolbox would address a need in the US aerospace and transportation communities and complement the robust control tools already developed MUSYN.

The immediate NASA application will be the X-53 Active Aeroelastic Wing (AAW) test bed at NASA Dryden. This aircraft will provide an experimental flight test capability for aeroservoeleastic control research. NASA and the USAF developed this test bed to investigate the use of wing aeroelastic flexibility for improved performance of high aspect ratio wings. The AAW test bed is an ideal facility to use the LPV framework for modeling, analysis, control and simulation. The proposed research will develop an integrated LPV flight control, gust alleviation and flutter suppression system for the AAW test bed. The performance and robustness of the LPV design will be accessed and compared with a baseline aeroservoelastic system.

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