Evolution Driven Controller Design for Aeroservoelastic Aircraft

An evolution driven controller design approach has been appliedto an aeroservoelastic model of a large passenger aircraft. Theaeroservoelastic model comprises structural, aerodynamic and flight dynamicsrelated elements and the chosen controller architecture is based on NonlinearDynamic Inversion. The evolutionary concept has played a significant role inthe optimization of the proposed NDI controller structure by providing tunedcontroller parameters which meet the designed fitness function criteria imposedthrough the optimization problem formulation. The proposed fitness function combinessignificant controller stability evaluation criteria into a single abstraction.The use of a robust optimization framework based on the genetic algorithms has allowedthe suggested form of multi-criteria optimization definition. The suitabilityof the evolutionary optimization has been successfully tested on a set ofexamples, which accounted for rigid body aircraft dynamics as well as for thecase with elastic structural modes. Time-domain simulation results have shownthe compliance of the tuned controller performance to its anticipated behavior.