Data-driven approximation of a high fidelity gust-oriented flexible aircraft dynamical model

Abstract

Computing responses to discrete gusts are sizing steps when designing and optimizing a new aircraft structure and geometry. Indeed, this is part of the imposed clearance certifications requested by the flight authorities. During the aircraft preliminary design phase, this clearance is done by intensive simulations, however, due to the involved models complexity, these latter are time consuming and imply an important computational burden. Especially as these simulations are involved at different steps of the aircraft optimisation process e.g. by aeroelastic, flight and control engineers. In this paper we propose a systematic way to fasten the gust simulation step and simplify the analysis by mean of data-driven model approximation in the Loewner framework. The proposed approach gathers recent advances in aeroelastic modelling and model approximation techniques. As illustrated on a high fidelity long range aircraft model, the drastic reduction of the simulation time does not induce any significant loss of accuracy.