SR Scientist wins Best Paper Award

For his work “Structured Control Design for a Highly Flexible Flutter Demonstrator”, published in the MDPI Aerospace Journal, Manuel Pusch, scientist at the Institute of System Dynamics and Control (SR), received the Best Paper Award. Co-authors are former DLR employee Daniel Ossmann from Munich University of Applied Sciences (HM) and Tamás Luspay from the Hungarian Institute for Computer Science and Control (SZTAKI).

The work was conducted within the scope of the FLEXOP research project, which aims at improving environmental sustainability and economic efficiency of aircraft. The developed flight control system includes a baseline controller to operate the aircraft fully autonomously and a flutter suppression controller to stabilize the unstable couplings of structural dynamics and aerodynamics and thereby extend the aircraft’s operational range. The baseline control system features a classical cascade flight control structure with scheduled control loops to augment the lateral and longitudinal axis of the aircraft. The flutter suppression controller uses an advanced blending technique to blend the flutter relevant sensor and actuator signals. These blends decouple the unstable modes and individually control them by scheduled single loop controllers. For the tuning of the free parameters in the defined controller structures, a model-based approach is used solving multi-objective, non-linear optimization problems. The developed control system, including baseline and flutter control algorithms, is verified in an extensive simulation campaign using a high-fidelity simulator. The simulator has a nonlinear model of the aircraft dynamics itself and detailed sensor and actuator descriptions.

Image: Daniel Vogel / TUM