For national security, the ability to cruise efficiently at a range of altitude, enabled by a substantial increase in cruise lift-to-drag (L/D) ratios over today's high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, is vital, providing sustained presence and long range. Robust control utilizing aerodynamic load/moment sensors would enable the efficient, robust active control of adaptive, lightweight wings to optimize lift distribution to maximize L/D. Cost-effectively, robustly improving the energy capture and reliability of wind turbines would help national renewable energy initiatives. A standalone aerodynamic load/moment sensor could provide output for robust control feedback to mitigate the turbine blade lifetime-limiting time varying loads generated by the ambient wind. The combination of robust control and accurate real-time aerodynamic load/moment sensors will enable a number of revolutionary capabilities across a wide speed range, including, but not limited to: (1) shorter take-off and landing, (2) safe, reliable supersonic operation, and (3) larger passenger and cargo capacity. The primary difficulty in all three revolutionary capabilities is the uncertainty in aerodynamic load \& moments generated by the airstream in design and off-design conditions, e.g., turbulent flows and high angles of attack. Measuring the aerodynamic loads/moments reduces the aerodynamic uncertainty enabling the aircraft to timely, robustly compensate for the adverse flow conditions, and utilizing a robust control methodology will provide guarantees otherwise not available. Therefore, the proposed innovation could be of significant interest to the aircraft civilian industry.
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