Longitudinal Manoeuvre Load Control of a Flexible Large-Scale Aircraft

Abstract

This paper discusses the design and validation of an integrated long range flexible aircraft load controller, at a single flight/mass configuration. The contributions of the paper are in twofold: (i) first, a very recent frequency-limited model approximation technique is used to reduce the large-scale aeroservoelastic aircraft model over a finite frequency support while guaranteeing optimal mismatch error, secondly, (ii) a structured controller is designed using an H1-objective and coupled with an output saturation strategy to achieve flight performance and load clearance, i.e. wing root bending moment saturation. The entire procedure - i.e. approximation and control - is finally assessed on the high fidelity large-scale aircraft model, illustrating the effectiveness of the procedure on a complex model, used in the industrial context in the control laws validation process.