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

What is it about?

Control law design for flexible aircraft with coupled structural and rigid-body dynamics is currently a challenge. This paper aims to improve the dynamical characteristics of a flexible aircraft by proposing a performance index for stability augmentation system design. The theoretical formulation will be presented, comparisons of numerical results between open-loop and closed-loop systems will be made and, finally, experimental data obtained via flight tests will be shown.

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Why is it important?

Practical validation was accomplished by means of flight tests. The designed lateral-directional SAS was implemented in the aircraft flight control system computer. Several preprogrammed aileron and antisymmetrical throttle doublet inputs were applied to the aircraft in flight. Analysis of the measured roll and yaw rates confirmed the effectiveness of the SAS in damping out the undesired Dutch-roll oscillations.

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