Investigation of Aspects of Aeroservoelastic State-Space Modeling on Active Flutter Suppression LQR Control Synthesis

Abstract

Whether motivated by cost or performance, the shift to structurally lighter aircraft has increased the demand for new developments in aeroservoelasticity. The William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics has invested significant resources to meet this demand, involving wind tunnel models and modifications, and software development. A major step in aeroservoelastic analysis is the generation of the required state-space models. This thesis describes the development of a MATLAB code with such a capability. The code is intended to be modified and used by the department for future research. This in-house capability allows for greater flexibility and transparency for future users. Two numerical experiments were run using the new code. The focus was the effect of actuator model's order and the range of reduced frequencies used to generate rational function approximation in the form of a Roger series. It was determined that the order of actuation models and the range of reduced frequencies used in a Roger Approximation had little to no effect on Linear-Quadratic Regulator synthesis and performance for Active Flutter Suppression of a wing/flap system investigated in this work.