Piecewise Global Volterra Nonlinear Modeling and Characterization for Aircraft Dynamics

Abstract

Evaluating global aircraft dynamic behavior by Volterra theory as an efficient nonlinear approximation method is investigated. In previous research, Volterra theory was implemented to evaluate the system behavior in a selected local region, which restricts the ability to capture the aircraft behavior while moving from one flight region to another. The current research presents a global piecewise Volterra kernel approach, which uses submodel Volterra kernels to build global kernels. A piecewise interpolation is employed to switch between the submodels. An approximate nonlinear pitch-plunge model for a high-performance aircraft was used to assess the proposed approach. A set of experimental simulations is conducted to verify the capability of the proposed model. The approach is compared with a global linear approach while employing the nonlinear simulation as the benchmark.