CONDUIT - A New Multidisciplinary Integration Environment for Flight Control Development.

Abstract

A state-of-the-art computational facility for aircraft flight control design, evaluation, and integration called CONDUIT (Control Designer's Unified Interface) has been developed. This paper describes the CONDUIT tool and case study applications to complex rotary- and fixed- wing fly-by-wire flight control problems. Control system analysis and design optimization methods are presented, including definition of design specifications and system models within CONDUIT, and the multi-objective function optimization (CONSOL-OPTCAD) used to tune the selected design parameters. Design examples are based on flight test programs for which extensive data are available for validation. CONDUIT is used to analyze baseline control laws against pertinent military handling qualities and control system specifications. In both case studies, CONDUIT successfully exploits trade-offs between forward loop and feedback dynamics to significantly improve the expected handling qualities and minimize the required actuator authority. The CONDUIT system provides a new environment for integrated control system analysis and design, and has potential for significantly reducing the time and cost of control system flight test optimization.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1997
Accession Number
ADA329056

Entities

People

  • Daniel J. Biezad
  • Jason D. Colbourne
  • Mark B. Tischler
  • Mark R. Morel
  • William S. Levine

Organizations

  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Actuators
  • Aircraft Equipment
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Algorithms
  • Army Aviation
  • Case Studies
  • Computer Programming
  • Control Systems
  • Dynamics
  • Environment
  • Feedback
  • Fixed Wing Aircraft
  • Frequency Domain
  • Optimization
  • Rotary Wing Aircraft
  • Specifications

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

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