Development and Testing of Control Laws for the Active Aeroelastic Wing Program

Dibley, Ryan P. and Allen, Michael J. and Clarke, Robert and Gera, Joseph and Hodgkinson, John (2005) Development and Testing of Control Laws for the Active Aeroelastic Wing Program. Technical Report NASA/TM-2005-213666, Research Engineering, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.

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Abstract

The Active Aeroelastic Wing research program was a joint program between the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA established to investigate the characteristics of an aeroelastic wing and the technique of using wing twist for roll control. The flight test program employed the use of an F/A-18 aircraft modified by reducing the wing torsional stiffness and adding a custom research flight control system. The research flight control system was optimized to maximize roll rate using only wing surfaces to twist the wing while simultaneously maintaining design load limits, stability margins, and handling qualities. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center developed control laws using the software design tool called CONDUIT, which employs a multi-objective function optimization to tune selected control system design parameters. Modifications were made to the Active Aeroelastic Wing implementation in this new software design tool to incorporate the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center nonlinear F/A-18 simulation for time history analysis. This paper describes the design process, including how the control law requirements were incorporated into constraints for the optimization of this specific software design tool. Predicted performance is also compared to results from flight.

EPrint Type:	NASA Technical Memorandum
Keywords:	AAW, Active aeroelastic wing, CONDUIT, Control reversal, F/A-18, Handling qualities, Structural loads model, Wing twist
Subjects:	(01 - 09) Aeronautics: (05) Aircraft Design, Testing And Performance (01 - 09) Aeronautics: (01) Aeronautics - General (01 - 09) Aeronautics: (08) Aircraft Stability And Control
ID Code:	467
Deposited On:	03 January 2006
Additional Information:	28 pages. Also presented as AIAA-2005-6314 at the AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference and Exhibit, San Francisco, CA, August 15–18, 2005.