Gust Load Alleviation for an Aeroelastic System Using Nonlinear Control

The author develops a nonlinear longitudinal model of an aircraft modeled by rigid fuselage, tail, and wing, where the wing is attached to the fuselage with a torsional spring. The main focus of this research is to retain the full nonlinearities associated with the system and to perform gust load alleviation for the model by comparing the impact of a proportional-integral- lter nonzero setpoint linear controller with control rate weighting and a nonlinear Lyapunov-based controller. The four degree of freedom longitudinal system under consideration includes the traditional longitudinal three degree of freedom aircraft model and one additional degree of freedom due to the torsion from the wing attachment. Computational simulations are performed to show the aeroelastic response of the aircraft due to a gust load disturbance with and without control. Results presented in this thesis show that the linear model fails to capture the true nonlinear response of the system and the linear controller based on the linear model does not stabilize the nonlinear system. The results from the Lyapunov-based control demonstrate the ability to stabilize the nonlinear response, including the presence of an LCO, and emphasize the importance of examining the fully nonlinear system with a nonlinear controller.