Aeroservoelastic modeling and applications using minimum-state approximations of the unsteady aerodynamics

Various control analysis, design, and simulation techniques for aeroelastic applications require the equations of motion to be cast in a linear time-invariant state-space form. Unsteady aerodynamics forces have to be approximated as rational functions of the Laplace variable in order to put them in this framework. For the minimum-state method, the number of denominator roots in the rational approximation. Results are shown of applying various approximation enhancements (including optimization, frequency dependent weighting of the tabular data, and constraint selection) with the minimum-state formulation to the active flexible wing wind-tunnel model. The results demonstrate that good models can be developed which have an order of magnitude fewer augmenting aerodynamic equations more than traditional approaches. This reduction facilitates the design of lower order control systems, analysis of control system performance, and near real-time simulation of aeroservoelastic phenomena.