Control Oriented Aeroservoelastic Modeling of a Small Flexible Aircraft using Computational Fluid Dynamics and Computational Structural Dynamics - Invited

Abstract

High fidelity modeling of aeroservoelastic aircraft with both rigid body and flexible dynamics is achieved using Computational Fluid Dynamics coupled with Computational Structural Dynamic (CFD/CSD) models. This modeling approach has advantages over potential flow-based modeling approaches in directly capturing unique dynamic aspects of vehicles that have significant coupling between rigid body and flexible dynamics. Full order CFD/CSD models require significant computational processing and memory, making them unsuitable for control design. An efficient approach has been developed that generates inputto-output reduced order state space models directly from these high order models. These reduced order models represent significant computational savings in both time and memory. They are ideal for control design and they capture the critical dynamic aspects associated with these highly coupled vehicles. This approach is applied to a small flexible aircraft designed specifically for aeroservoelastic research. The advantages and unique aspects of this approach are highlighted via novel analysis approaches.