Gust Load Alleviation Control of Aircraft with Varying Mass Distribution

Today's aviation research intensively examines new materials and high aspect ratio wings.These advances in aircraft design demand for secondary control algorithms supporting the aircraft structure.As a novel approach, this paper discusses model predictive control as augmentation to a long-range aircraft with increased vulnerability to gust encounter.Model predictive control provides the possibility to directly control the parameter of interest in the presence of constraints.The proposed gust load alleviation control method processes estimates of the wing root bending moment.The control surface deflections chosen to fulfill this task are limited in deflection and rate.Gust load alleviation controllers are synthesised for different mass cases and flight conditions.Subsequently, the most critical loads over the wing span are identified with and without gust load alleviation.