Gust Load Alleviation Research Articles

Fault Tolerant Control of an Experimental Flexible Wing

Active control techniques are a key factor in today’s aircraft developments to reduce structural loads and thereby enable highly efficient aircraft designs. Likewise, increasing the autonomy of aircraft systems aims to maintain the highest degree of operational performance also in fault scenarios. Motivated by these two aspects, this article describes the design and validation of a fault tolerant gust load alleviation control system on a flexible wing in a wind tunnel. The baseline gust load alleviation controller isolates and damps the weakly damped first wing bending mode. The mode isolation is performed via an H 2 -optimal blending of control inputs and measurement outputs, which allows for the design of a simple single-input single-output controller to actively damp the mode. To handle actuator faults, a control allocation scheme based on quadratic programming is implemented, which distributes the required control energy to the remaining available control surfaces. The control allocation is triggered in fault scenarios by a fault detection scheme developed to monitor the actuators using nullspace based filter design techniques. Finally, the fault tolerant control scheme is verified by wind tunnel experiments.

Gust Load Alleviation including Geometric Nonlinearities Based on Dynamic Linearization of Structural ROM

This paper describes a framework for an active control technique applied to gust load alleviation (GLA) of a flexible wing, including geometric nonlinearities. Nonlinear structure reduced order model (ROM) and nonplanar double-lattice method (DLM) are used for structural and aerodynamic modeling. The structural modeling method presented herein describes stiffness nonlinearities in polynomial formulation. Nonlinear stiffness can be derived by stepwise regression. Inertia terms are constant with linear approximation. Boundary conditions and kernel functions in the nonplanar DLM are determined by structural deformation to reflect a nonlinear effect. However, the governing equation is still linear. A state-space equation is established in a dynamic linearized system around the prescribed static equilibrium state after nonlinear static aeroelastic analysis. Gust response analysis can be conducted subsequently. For GLA analysis, a classic proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller treats a servo as an actuator and acceleration as the feedback signal. Moreover, a wind tunnel test has been completed and the effectiveness of the control technology is validated. A remote-controlled (RC) model servo is chosen in the wind tunnel test. Numerical simulation results of gust response analysis reach agreement with test results. Furthermore, the control system gives GLA efficacy of vertical acceleration and root bending moment with the reduction rate being over 20%. The method described in this paper is suitable for gust response analysis and control strategy design for large flexible wings.

Aeroservoelastic design of piezo-composite wings for gust load alleviation

In this study, aeroservoelastic design of piezo-composite wings is performed to minimize gust responses. The wing structure is modeled as a composite thin-walled beam featuring fiber-reinforced host structure and piezo-actuators whose anisotropic characteristics are accounted. In addition, doublet-lattice method and rational function approximation technique are integrated to establish the aeroservoelastic model. State feedback H-infinity controllers are synthesized for different wing configurations in order to assess the closed-loop effectiveness. Numerical results demonstrate that the gust load alleviation performance is sensitive to the piezo-actuator ply-angle, namely of that the gust response can be effectively suppressed for the wing configuration with appropriate ply-angle.

Static and dynamic characterization of a flexible scaledjoined-wing flight test demonstrator

High Altitude and Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft are capable of providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities over vast geographic areas when equipped with advanced sensor packages. As their use becomes more widespread, the demand for additional range, endurance and payload capability will increase and designers are exploring non-conventional configurations to meet the increasing demands. One such configuration is the joined-wing concept. A joined-wing aircraft is one that typically connects a front and aft wings in a diamond shaped planform. One such example is the Boeing SensorCraft configuration. While the joined-wing configuration offers potential benefits regarding aerodynamic efficiency, structural weight, and sensing capabilities, structural design requires careful consideration of elastic buckling resulting from the aft wing supporting, in compression, part of the forward wing structural loading. It has been shown already that this is a nonlinear phenomenon, involving geometric nonlinearities and follower forces that tend to flatten the entire configuration, leading to structural overload due to the loss of the aft wing\'s ability to support the forward wing load. Severe gusts are likely to be the critical design condition, with flight control system interaction in the form of Gust Load Alleviation (GLA) playing a key role in minimizing the structural loads. The University of Victoria Center for Aerospace Research (UVic-CfAR) has built a 3-meter span scaled and flexible wing UAV based on the Boeing SensorCraft design. The goal is to validate the nonlinear structural behavior in flight. The main objective of this research work is to perform Ground Vibration Tests (GVT) to characterize the dynamic properties of the scaled flight vehicle. Results from the experimental tests are used to characterize the modal dynamics of the aircraft, and to validate the numerical models. The GVT results are an important step towards a safe flight test program.

Integrated optimization of control surface layout for gust load alleviation

Considering active gust load alleviation (GLA) during aircraft design offers great potential for structural weight savings. The effectiveness of a GLA control system strongly depends on the layout of available control surfaces, which is investigated in this article. For the purpose of wing load reduction, a concurrent optimization of controller gains and aileron geometry parameters is carried out. To that end, an efficient update routine for the nonlinear model of a large-scale flexible aircraft with unsteady aerodynamics is presented. Compared to a GLA system using the original aileron configuration, a 9% performance improvement is achieved. Furthermore, a trade-off study is carried out which enables a target-oriented balancing between individual load channels. The significant influence of aileron size and position on overall GLA performance is demonstrated and hence a consideration during the preliminary aircraft design process is recommended.

Gust load alleviation in a flexible smart idealized wing

Among the aeroelastic phenomena most commonly affecting flexible and very flexible aircraft, those caused by gusts deserve special attention due to their potential either in degrading flying qualities and ride comfort or in increasing structural loads. It is then of interest to structural loads and flight controls engineers that solutions be developed to attenuate the effects of gusts on aircraft. Particularly, the use of piezoelectric transducers arises as one of the potential solutions in the design of gust load alleviation and structural mode suppression systems. In this paper, the gust load alleviation on a flexible smart idealized wing using only piezoelectric transducers is analyzed and experimentally tested. The numerical model includes a finite-element model of the wing, employing two-node, seven-degree-of-freedom smart beam elements, assuming small deformations and neglecting transverse shear. A quasi-steady, strip-theory-based aerodynamic model is used. Two control laws are evaluated: one based on output feedback, and the other based on feedback of observed states of a truncated system. Using a gust generator, wind-tunnel tests were performed at different flow speeds and gust frequencies to validate the computational model and to verify the performance of piezoelectric transducers. The results show a considerable attenuation of the wing root bending moment, especially using two piezoelectric actuators. Important performance improvements were overall verified with feedback of observed states when compared with static output feedback, specially to decrease the participation of the elastic modes in the gust response.

Gust load alleviation for a long-range aircraft with and without anticipation

This paper presents an overview of the DLR activities on active load alleviation in the CleanSky Smart Fixed Wing Aircraft project. The investigations followed two main research directions: the multi-objective, multi-model, structured controller design for the feedback load alleviation part and the use of Doppler LIDAR technologies for gust/turbulence anticipation. On this latter topic, the prior work made in the AWIATOR European FP6 project constituted a reference in terms of demonstrations and the objective was not to repeat these previous investigations with a real sensor in flight test but to develop new ideas for the exploitation of the Doppler LIDAR measurements for gust alleviation purposes. Very fruitful exchanges between industry partners and research organizations took place during this project and all the work presented in this paper has been made using a generic long-range benchmark provided by Airbus on the basis of the XRF-1 model.

A Generalized State-Space Aeroservoelastic Model Based on Tangential Interpolation

In this work, a new approach for the generation of a generalized state-space aeroservoelastic model based on tangential interpolation is presented. The resulting system of differential algebraic equations (DAE) is reduced to a set of ordinary differential equations (ODE) by residualization of the non-proper part of the transfer function matrix. The generalized state-space is of minimal order and allows for the application of the force summation method (FSM) for the aircraft loads recovery. Compared to the classical rational function approximation (RFA) approach, the presented method provides a minimal order realization with exact interpolation of the unsteady aerodynamic forces in tangential directions, avoiding any selection of poles (lag states). The new approach is applied first for the generation of an aerodynamic model for the bidimensional unsteady incompressible flow in the time domain. Next, an application on the generation of an aeroservoelastic model for loads evaluation of the flutter reduced order assessment (FERMAT) model under atmospheric disturbances is done, showing an excellent agreement with the reference model in the frequency domain. The proposed aeroservoelastic model of minimal order is suited for loads analysis and multivariable control design, and an application to a gust loads alleviation (GLA) strategy is shown.

Higher-Order Estimations of Load Factor from Derived Gust Velocity

Pratt’s formula, in which the aircraft is modeled as a single-degree-of-freedom system, is used extensively to extract derived gust velocities from measured normal acceleration. There is evidence that airframe mass distribution along the longitudinal axis can affect the gust load alleviation factor. In this paper, the inclusion of the pitching degree of freedom in the model is explored, accounting for the aircraft mass distribution along the longitudinal axis. Two different two-degree-of-freedom models are presented and numerical solutions are offered. A typical heavy transport aircraft is used for illustration. It is shown that the inclusion of the second degree of freedom results in as much as 10% reduction in the magnitude of the gust load alleviation factor.

Computational analysis on actuator failures of flexible aircraft

A coupled model of aeroservoelasticity and hydraulic actuator used for failure simulation is presented. The mathematical model composites rigid-body modes, elastic modes, control surface modes, unsteady aerodynamic forces and failure models (jam, loss of control (LOC), oscillatory failure, and hydraulic fluid leakage). A clear framework of coupling method of airplane aeroelastic equation and control surface dynamic equation is provided to study the impacts of surface failures on rigid-elastic motion of airplane. The coupled model is shown to be effective in evaluation of gust response in both discrete gust and continuous turbulence conditions compared with results obtained from the 3-order simplified actuator. Examples of gust load alleviation (GLA) system with LOC of ailerons are given. Results show that total loss of function of GLA system is caused by the LOC. With continuous turbulence excitation, the failure loads is several times larger than that without GLA system.

Testing of a Hinged Wingtip Device for Gust Loads Alleviation

Recent aircraft designs have considered higher-aspect-ratio wings to reduce induced drag for improved fuel efficiency; however, to remain compliant with airport gate requirements, folding wingtips have been introduced as a solution to the increased wingspan. Recent numerical studies suggest that a folding wingtip solution may be incorporated with spring devices to provide an additional gust loads alleviation ability in flight as well. In this work, a series of low-speed steady and dynamic wind tunnel tests was conducted using a prototype of such a concept. It was found that a folding wingtip with a nonzero relative angle of the folding hinge axis to the streamwise direction could provide gust loads alleviation. The level of load alleviation varied with hinge spring stiffness and lifting condition, with the best performance achieving a 56% reduction in peak loading.

Computational-Fluid-Dynamics-Based Aeroservoelastic Analysis for Gust Load Alleviation

Gust load alleviation using computational fluid dynamics as source of the aerodynamic predictions is carried out in the time domain. To this goal, an aeroservoelastic reduced-order model is generated. The model capitalizes on two key aspects: a dimensional reduction through proper orthogonal decomposition, further enhanced via balanced truncation, and an analytically derived mechanism to reproduce the gust effects in the reduced-order model. The compact model in state-space form thus obtained was then used for control design synthesis. Assuming that information on the structural motion only is accessible for feedback, a linear quadratic regular was designed first on the reduced model and then validated on the large computational model. Results are presented for two configurations: an aerofoil and the modified AGARD 445.6 wing, both with a trailing-edge control surface. Studies are presented for the gust response to discrete gusts and continuous turbulence. In particular, for the latter, the standard deviation of the loads and the structural motion was reduced as much as 77%.

LQG based model predictive control for gust load alleviation

A linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) based model predictive control (MPC) method is proposed to alleviate the dynamic gust loads of flexible aircrafts flying through turbulence, utilizing look-ahead information of the turbulence via light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems or on board alpha probe. The new method features both infinite prediction horizon and infinite control horizon. The forepart of the infinite control sequence consists of a few online optimized variables, and the rest are outputs of an LQG controller, designed offline using an improved LQG method. The advantages of the proposed method are twofold. Firstly, the stability property of the controlled system is improved due to application of the infinite prediction horizon and the LQG controller. Secondly, adoption of an infinite control horizon not only improves the control performance, but also greatly reduces the number of online optimized control variables whilst retaining control performance. Furthermore, a technique to tackle the effects of control delay is also designed. The effectiveness and advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated through numerical results using a general transport aircraft model.

Gust Load Alleviation: Identification, Control, and Wind Tunnel Testing of a 2-D Aeroelastic Airfoil

One important element in the progression of aircraft environmental impact reduction is to reduce their overall weight (without impacting other consumption-oriented performance index, such as drag). In addition to the numerous work conducted in material and structural engineering, from a control viewpoint, this challenge is strongly connected to the need of the development and assessment of dedicated load control strategies in response to gust disturbances . Indeed, the load factors due to gust are considered as sizing criteria during the aircraft conception steps and require specific verification according to the certification process. To this end, a dedicated experimental research program based on wind tunnel (WT) campaigns has been carried out. More specifically, this paper contributions are twofold: 1) to identify the gust load effect using two different versatile frequency-domain techniques, namely, the Loewner interpolation and a modified subspace approach and 2) to design and implement an active closed-loop control to alleviate the gust main effect. The entire procedure is validated in a WT setup, involving a gust generator device and a 2-D aeroelastic airfoil, for varying configuration traveling from sub to transonic airflow and varying angles of attack, emphasizing the effectiveness and robustness of the overall approach.

Gust response and body freedom flutter of a flying-wing aircraft with a passive gust alleviation device

The effectiveness of a passive gust alleviation device (PGAD) mounted at the wingtip of aircraft in conventional and flying-wing configurations have been studied in previous research. However the PGAD influence on the aeroelastic stability in particular the body freedom flutter (BFF) of a flying-wing aircraft remains as a concern. This present investigation is focused on evaluating the beneficial effect of PGAD on both gust load alleviation and BFF of a small flying-wing aircraft of high aspect ratio wing made of composite. A small range of (1-cos) type of gust load has been considered to select a representative critical gust load case for the study. A parametric study indicates that there is a narrow band of optimal key parameters for the PGAD design. Subsequently a set of optimal parameters is selected to further the analysis of the PGAD mechanism. The case study results show that the PGAD can make the bending moment at the wing root due to gust reduced by 16%. In addition, the BFF speed of the flying-wing aircraft is increased by 4.2%. The investigation reveals that the PGAD mode and its interaction with the wing bending mode and short period oscillation of the aircraft can have beneficial aeroelastic effect on both gust alleviation and flutter suppression.

Aerostructural optimization of a morphing wing for airborne wind energy applications

Airborne wind energy (AWE) vehicles maximize energy production by constantly operating at extreme wing loading, permitted by high flight speeds. Additionally, the wide range of wind speeds and the presence of flow inhomogeneities and gusts create a complex and demanding flight environment for AWE systems. Adaptation to different flow conditions is normally achieved by conventional wing control surfaces and, in case of ground generator-based systems, by varying the reel-out speed. These control degrees of freedom enable to remain within the operational envelope, but cause significant penalties in terms of energy output. A significantly greater adaptability is offered by shape-morphing wings, which have the potential to achieve optimal performance at different flight conditions by tailoring their airfoil shape and lift distribution at different levels along the wingspan. Hence, the application of compliant structures for AWE wings is very promising. Furthermore, active gust load alleviation can be achieved through morphing, which leads to a lower weight and an expanded flight envelope, thus increasing the power production of the AWE system. This work presents a procedure to concurrently optimize the aerodynamic shape, compliant structure, and composite layup of a morphing wing for AWE applications. The morphing concept is based on distributed compliance ribs, actuated by electromechanical linear actuators, guiding the deformation of the flexible—yet load-carrying—composite skin. The goal of the aerostructural optimization is formulated as a high-level requirement, namely to maximize the average annual power production per wing area of an AWE system by tailoring the shape of the wing, and to extend the flight envelope of the wing by actively alleviating gust loads. The results of the concurrent multidisciplinary optimization show a 50.7% increase of extracted power with respect to a sequentially optimized design, highlighting the benefits of morphing and the potential of the proposed approach.

Improved LQG Method for Active Gust Load Alleviation

AbstractAgainst a background of various techniques for gust load alleviation (GLA), this paper aims at proposing an improved linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) method, which is robust to variations of...

Genetic Algorithm-Based Model Order Reduction of Aeroservoelastic Systems with Consistent States

This paper presents a model order reduction framework to construct linear parameter-varying reduced-order models of flexible aircraft for aeroservoelasticity analysis and control synthesis in broad two-dimensional flight parameter space. Genetic algorithms are used to automatically determine physical states for reduction and to generate reduced-order models at grid points within parameter space while minimizing the trial-and-error process. In addition, balanced truncation for unstable systems is used in conjunction with the congruence transformation technique to achieve locally optimal realization and “weak” fulfillment of state consistency across the entire parameter space. Therefore, aeroservoelasticity reduced-order models at any flight condition can be obtained simply through model interpolation. The methodology is applied to the pitch-plant model of the X-56A Multi-Use Technology Testbed currently being tested at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center for flutter suppression and gust load alleviation. The present studies indicate that the reduced-order model with more than reduction in the number of states relative to the original model is able to accurately predict system response among all input–output channels. The genetic-algorithm-guided approach exceeds manual and empirical state selection in terms of efficiency and accuracy. The interpolated aeroservoelasticity reduced-order models exhibit smooth pole transition and continuously varying gains along a set of prescribed flight conditions, which verifies consistent state representation obtained by congruence transformation. The present model order reduction framework can be used by control engineers for robust aeroservoelasticity controller synthesis and novel vehicle design.

Gust load alleviation wind tunnel tests of a large-aspect-ratio flexible wing with piezoelectric control

An active control technique utilizing piezoelectric actuators to alleviate gust-response loads of a large-aspect-ratio flexible wing is investigated. Piezoelectric materials have been extensively used for active vibration control of engineering structures. In this paper, piezoelectric materials further attempt to suppress the vibration of the aeroelastic wing caused by gust. The motion equation of the flexible wing with piezoelectric patches is obtained by Hamilton’s principle with the modal approach, and then numerical gust responses are analyzed, based on which a gust load alleviation (GLA) control system is proposed. The gust load alleviation system employs classic proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers which treat piezoelectric patches as control actuators and acceleration as the feedback signal. By a numerical method, the control mechanism that piezoelectric actuators can be used to alleviate gust-response loads is also analyzed qualitatively. Furthermore, through low-speed wind tunnel tests, the effectiveness of the gust load alleviation active control technology is validated. The test results agree well with the numerical results. Test results show that at a certain frequency range, the control scheme can effectively alleviate the z and x wingtip accelerations and the root bending moment of the wing to a certain extent. The control system gives satisfying gust load alleviation efficacy with the reduction rate being generally over 20%.

Gust Load Alleviation on a Large Transport Airplane

This study develops an active control technology to reduce the incremental dynamic loads of a large four-engine transport airplane flying through a gust field. The mathematical model of the proposed gust-alleviation system features composite structural motions (for example, rigid-body motions, elastic vibrations, and deflections of control surfaces) and unsteady aerodynamic forces induced by the structural motions and the gusts. A clear outline of the procedure is first provided to determine the aeroservoelastic equation of the system. Then, an adaptive feedforward controller that uses the preview information of the gust sensed by an onboard alpha probe is designed to operate the ailerons symmetrically to alleviate the wing-root bending moment induced by the gust. The rigid-body motions due to travelling gusts are also compensated for using symmetrical deflections of the elevators. To solve the problems of weight drift and weight bias that are commonly encountered in adaptive control, the circular leaky least mean-squared algorithm is applied to update the weights of the adaptive controller. The simulation results show that a large transport airplane equipped with the proposed gust-alleviation system experiences a significantly lower wing-root bending moment in both stationary and nonstationary gusty environments.