Hamiltonian Gust Load Alleviation Control with Adaptive Gust Estimation: Analysis and Wind Tunnel Test Correlation

This paper presents the design and experimental validation of a Hamiltonian controller for gust load alleviation (GLA) on a flexible wing wind tunnel model. The control design incorporates practical implementation considerations, including low-pass filtering to prevent excitation of high-frequency structural modes, LQR stabilization of actuator dynamics, and state and gust estimation via an extended-state Kalman filter. The Hamiltonian GLA controller is implemented on the Large Flexible Wing (LFW) test article, an 8.36 aspect ratio Generic Transport Model employing the VCCTEF concept, in active control experiments conducted at the University of Washington’s 12 ft by 8 ft Kirsten Wind Tunnel. Experimental results demonstrate substantial attenuation of structural response due to gust disturbances. Additionally, an adaptive gust estimation scheme is proposed, derived from the structural dynamics equations, to improve robustness to uncertainty in gust frequency, motivated by discrepancies observed in wind tunnel gust measurements.