Attitude Control Enhancement Using Distributed Wing Load Sensing for Dynamic Servoelastic Control

Strain sensor information is used in nature to achieve robust flight, good rejection of wind disturbances, and stable head motion. Similar man-made sensing devices will be used to demonstrate flight control using Fly-by-Feel, with the overall objective of achieving similarly good performance with piloted and autonomous vehicles. The Phase I work demonstrated the feasibility of using strain sensor arrays for flight control applications. This was done using hardware testing on a wing in a laboratory setting. An important part of showing feasibility was the use of novel frequency domain identification techniques, which were used to identify both modal frequencies and strain mode shapes. The proposed work will develop the ACES system: Attitude Control Enhancement using Strain sensors using both wind tunnel and flight test demonstrations. Acceleration feedback is known to improve the gust disturbance rejection, and the same will be demonstrated in an active control experiment using strain sensors in a wind tunnel. A second experiment will be conducted using a different and more flexible wing to demonstrate active control of shape. Modeling and simulation will be used to begin the transition of this technology to larger commercial vehicles.