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Session: Flutter control
Session starts: Thursday 20 June, 16:00
Presentation starts: 17:30
Room: Room 1.4/1.5

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Balint Vanek (HUN-REN SZTAKI)
Virag Bodor (HUN-REN SZTAKI)
Bela Takarics (HUN-REN SZTAKI)
Thiemo Kier (DLR)
Keith Soal (DLR)
Charles Poussot-Vassal (ONERA)
Nicolas Guerin (ONERA)
Mirko Hornung (TUM)
Christian Roessler (TUM)

Abstract:
The European FliPASED H2020 consortium developed multidisciplinary design capabilities for commercial aircraft that increases competitiveness in terms of aircraft development costs and environmental impact via a closer coupling of wing aeroelasticity and flight control systems. The team developed not only advanced design tools but also flight tested several key enabling technologies to mature the technology readiness level of previously unviable designs: common models, methods and tools across disciplines could provide a way to rapidly adapt existing designs into derivative aircraft, at a reduced technological risk (e.g. using control to solve load alleviation and flutter problems discovered during development). The paper describes the fundamental hurdles tackled to successfully conduct active flutter control experiments on a 7 m wingspan conventional configuration demonstrator. Motivation, driven by industry needs, of active flutter control, is mostly established within the prior project FLEXOP H2020 and the basic concept of the demonstrator aircraft built to perform research on active flutter control methods. To be able to conduct successful active flutter control experiments the team had to mature experimental capabilities as well as theoretical mathematical modelling and control design tools hand in hand. Key components for success with dedicated chapters in the paper were: • Establishing multidisciplinary workflows for understanding the benefits of flutter control as a key enabler of designing high aspect ratio wing aircraft, • Development of a scaled demonstrator exhibiting many of the required aeroelastic phenomena applicable for commercial aircraft industry, including wing bending torsion coupled flutter at an attainable flight speed and acceptable flutter frequency, • Mature the ground and flight test procedures and infrastructure to conduct tests and iterate the results within a short timeframe, • Build control oriented aeroservoelastic models, including flutter prediction methods, what can be tuned with experimental results including high fidelity CFD, GVT and flight tests, • Solve the control problem of flutter, including sensor selection, highly complex dynamics and coupling of control loops, • Mature operation modal analysis methods to help conducting safe flight tests, with special emphasis on running the algorithms onboard the demonstrator real-time, • Develop custom actuators, sensors and flight control computers, with hardware-in-the-loop testing capabilities working across teams. Within an iterative design cycle theoretical results and analytical predictions were improved and validated by independent flight tests by a highly motivated team, leading to the success of the ground-breaking flutter control experiments. Several of the key building blocks to achieve successful flight tests, including major research findings are discussed within the paper, with reference to other papers diving deeper into specific topics presented at the same conference.