Gust Load Control Design Challenge Including Lidar Wind Measurements and Based on the Common Research Model

Abstract

Active load alleviation systems are key to enabling the design of lighter structures by reducing structural loads. The ongoing development of gust detection systems based on a Doppler lidar sensor has created the opportunity to design powerful gust load alleviation controllers with access to the wind field over 100 m ahead of the aircraft. The present paper describes a highly representative public benchmark for lidar-based gust load alleviation. It is based on a linear aeroservoelastic model of the Common Research Model (CRM), a surrogate model of a Doppler wind lidar sensor, and a wind reconstruction algorithm. An active gust load alleviation control design challenge based on this benchmark is proposed, and an example of a lidar-based controller is designed and evaluated against this challenge.