Reduced Order Aeroservoelastic Models with Rigid Body Modes

Complex aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic phenomena can be modeled on complete aircraft configurations, generating models with millions of degrees of freedom. Reduced order models are used for systems and control analysis. The ability to do so on freely supported vehicles has been demonstrated including estimates of the rigid body dynamics. Improvements to this process are proposed to more closely match known frequency responses in the rigid body range, and to generate the reduced order models in a form that can be used for linear parameter varying control design methods. A set of modest order aircraft models will be collected and created using flexible structures and doublet lattice aerodynamics. These models will be used develop and demonstrated the improved model order reduction methodology, and then a plan will be developed to generalize this process for very high fidelity models. The improvements will increase the technical readiness of new model order reduction methods used to create aeroelastic models that include rigid body dynamics. The ability to create these models in the form used by linear parameter varying control methods will make it possible to develop flight control systems with provable robustness across the entire flight envelope. More »