Integrated Gust Load Alleviation and Active Flutter Suppression - Control Law Synthesis and Wind Tunnel Tests

Complex aeroelastic interactions, including gust response and flutter, challenge aircraft designers by reducing efficiency, degrading flight quality, and introducing structural loads and instabilities that can lead to failure. This paper presents the development, implementation, and experimental study of active control strategies, including LQG, MPC, and MPC with disturbance preview, for combined gust load alleviation (GLA) and active flutter suppression (AFS). A major goal is to evaluate MPC controllers in GLA-only tasks and in simultaneous AFS and GLA tasks in a realistic aeronautics environment. The study is carried out at the University of Washington’s low-speed wind tunnel facility, using a flexible half-wing-body-tail aeroservoelastic model (MARGE-I) and a gust generation system. The tests demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed control strategies, achieving significant reductions in peak loads as well as improved stability margins, validating the applicability of the designed controllers in realistic scenarios. This work contributes to advancing the state-of-the-art in active control of aeroelastic systems. New insights regarding the synthesis and performance of aeroelastic MPC controllers are gained. The findings have implications for the design and optimization of future aircraft, paving the way for safer, more efficient, and more flight crews and passenger "friendly" aerospace systems.