Using Distributed Fiber-Optic Strain Sensing to Estimate Modal Generalized Modal Coordinates from Flight-Test Data

Background and Motivation
- Problem
- Contemporary aircraft carry around structural mass so that the flutter instabilities lie well outside of the operational envelope.
- Better methods of measuring the structural state could allow reduction of the extra structural weight.
- Modal filtering
- Standard method in structural analysis
- Deformations are a combination of mode shapes
- Modal filtering is estimating these modal coordinates from data
- Often ordinary least squares methods
- Often applied to simpler test articles
- Factor Analysis
- Classic (in psychology) analysis method
- Measurements are a combination of small number of unmeasurable variables
- Lessons from this factor can be adapted to improve the modal filtering methods