Gust Load Alleviation Using Reduced-Order Aeroelastic Models and Observer-Based Robust Control

Abstract

In this Note, the gust load alleviation of an aeroelastic aircraft model is investigated through an observer-based active control architecture. Such an active control is composed of a robust observer that exploits the available measurements to estimate the bending moments acting on the wing and a structured H∞ controller, which uses the aforementioned estimates to attenuate the worst-case transfer from the perturbation channel to the performance outputs. It is shown that these estimates allow for better performance in terms of both frequency and time responses.