Evolution Driven Controller Design for Aeroservoelastic Aircraft

Evolutionary algorithms, Numerical optimization, Controller Design, Aeroservoelastic aircraft, Nonlinear dynamic inversion, Pseudo Control Hedging

An evolution driven controller design approach has been applied to an aeroservoelastic model of a large passenger aircraft. The aeroservoelastic model comprises structural, aerodynamic and flight dynamics related elements and the chosen controller architecture is based on Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion. The evolutionary concept has played a significant role in the optimization of the proposed NDI controller structure by providing tuned controller parameters which meet the designed fitness function criteria imposed through the optimization problem formulation. The proposed fitness function combines significant controller stability evaluation criteria into a single abstraction. The use of a robust optimization framework based on the genetic algorithms has allowed the suggested form of multi-criteria optimization definition. The suitability of the evolutionary optimization has been successfully tested on a set of examples, which accounted for rigid body aircraft dynamics as well as for the case with elastic structural modes. Time-domain simulation results have shown the compliance of the tuned controller performance to its anticipated behavior.