Design and Flight Test of a Stability Augmentation System for a Flexible Aircraft

What is it about?

A lateral-directional stability augmentation system was designed for the ITA X-HALE flexible aircraft using numerical minimization of a time-domain integral-squared-error-based performance index proposed in this paper. Comparisons between nonlinear open-loop and closed-loop simulations demonstrated the effectiveness of the SAS. An aeroservoelastic analysis of the SAS demonstrated small but beneficial effects on antisymmetric wing bending aeroelastic modes. Practical validation of the designed SAS was accomplished through flight tests.

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