Using Distributed Fiber-optic Strain Sensing to Estimate 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
- Analysis method from psychology
- Measurements are a combination of small number of unmeasurable
variables.
- Lessons from factor analysis can be adapted to improve the modal
filtering methods