The blended wing body (BWB) is a tailless aircraft with the potential to use 27% less fuel than a conventional aircraft with the same passenger capacity and range. The primary purpose of the current study was to determine the handling qualities of the BWB, using piloted-handling trials in a moving-base simulator. The secondary purpose was to determine the effect of simulator motion on handling-quality ratings. De Castro conducted piloted-handling trials in a fixed-base simulator. De Castro's tasks and flight model were modified in the current study. In the current study, three subjects rated the handling qualities as Level 1 or 2, depending on the task. Simulator motion did not have a significant effect on the results.

The blended wing body (BWB) is a tailless aircraft with the potential to use 27% less fuel than a conventional aircraft with the same passenger capacity and range. The primary purpose of the current study was to determine the handling qualities of the BWB, using piloted-handling trials in a moving-base simulator. The secondary purpose was to determine the effect of simulator motion on handling-quality ratings. De Castro conducted piloted-handling trials in a fixed-base simulator. De Castro's tasks and flight model were modified in the current study. In the current study, three subjects rated the handling qualities as Level 1 or 2, depending on the task. Simulator motion did not have a significant effect on the results.

The study of the motion of manoeuvring aircraft has traditionally considered the aircraft to be rigid. This simplifying assumption has been shown to give quite accurate results for the flight dynamics of many aircraft types. As modern transport aircraft have developed however, there has been a marked increase in the size and weight of these aircraft. This trend is likely to continue with the development of future blended-wing-body and supersonic transport aircraft. This increase in size and weight has brought about a unique set of aeroelastic and handling quality issues. The aerodynamic forces and moments acting on an aeroplane have traditionally been represented using the aerodynamic derivative approach. It has been shown that this quasisteady aerodynamic model inadequately predicts the aircraft’s stability characteristics, and that the inclusion of unsteady aerodynamics “greatly improves the fidelity” of aircraft models. This thesis thus presents a novel numerical simulation of an aeroelastic aeroplane for real-time analysis. The model is built around the standard six degree-of-freedom equations of motion for a rigid aeroplane using the mean-axes system, and includes unsteady aerodynamics and structural dynamics. This is suitable for pilot-in-the-loop simulation, handling qualities and flight loads analysis, and control law development. The dynamics of the structure are modelled as a set of normal modes, and the equations of motion are realised in state-space form. The unsteady aerodynamic forces acting on the aeroplane are described by an indicial state-space model, including unsteady tailplane downwash and compressibility effects. An implementation of the model is presented in the MATLAB/ Simulink environment. The interaction between the flight control system, the aeroelastic system and the rigidbody motion of the aeroplane can result in degraded handling qualities, excessive actuator control, and fatigue problems. The introduction of load alleviation systems for the management of loads due to manoeuvres and gusts is also likely to result in the handling qualities of the aeroplane being degraded. This thesis presents a number of studies into the impact of structural dynamics, unsteady aerodynamics, and load alleviation on the handling qualities of a flexible civil transport aeroplane. The handling qualities of the aeroplane are assessed against a number of different handling qualities criteria and flying specifications, including the Neal-Smith, Bandwidth, and CAP criterion. It is shown that aeroelastic effects alter the longitudinal and lateral-directional characteristics of the aeroplane, resulting in degraded handling qualities. Manoeuvre and gust load alleviation are similarly found to degrade handling qualities, while active mode control is shown to offer the possibility of improved handling qualities.

This thesis considers the problem of designing gain scheduled flight control system (FCS) for large transport aircraft that satisfy handling qualities criteria. The goal is to design a set of local Linear Time Invariant (LTI) controllers to cover the wide non- linear aircraft operation flight envelope from the viewpoint of the handling qualities assessment. The global gain scheduler is then designed that interpolates between the gains of the local controllers in order to transfer smoothly between different equilibrium points, and more importantly to satisfy the handling qualities over the entire flight envelope. The mathematical model of the Boeing 747-100/200 aircraft is selected for the purpose of the flight controller design and handling qualities as- sessment. In order to achieve an attitude hold characteristic, and also improve the dynamic tracking behavior of the aircraft, longitudinal pitch Rate Command-Attitude Hold (RCAH) controllers are designed as the local flight controllers at the specific equilib- rium points in the flight envelope by means of a state space pole placement design procedure. The handling qualities assessment of the aircraft is presented, based on which the scheduler is designed. A number of existing criteria are employed to assess the han- dling qualities of the aircraft, including the Control Anticipation Parameter (CAP), Neal and Smith, and C∗ criteria. The gain scheduled flight controller is found to have satisfactory handling qualities. The global gain scheduler is designed by interpolating the gains of the local flight controllers in order to transfer smoothly between different equilibrium points, and more importantly to satisfy the handling qualities over the flight envelope. The main contribution of this research is the combination of the gain scheduling technique based on the local controller design approach and handling qualities as- sessment. The controllers are designed based at a number of operating points and the interpolation between them (scheduling) takes place through the scheduling scheme functions. The aircraft augmented with gain-scheduled controller performs satisfactorily and meets the requirement of handling qualities. Moreover, the per- formance using the gain-scheduled controller is considerably improved compared to the performance using the fixed one.

The study of the motion of manoeuvring aircraft has traditionally considered the aircraft to be rigid. This simplifying assumption has been shown to give quite accurate results for the flight dynamics of many aircraft types. As modern transport aircraft have developed however, there has been a marked increase in the size and weight of these aircraft. This trend is likely to continue with the development of future blended-wing-body and supersonic transport aircraft. This increase in size and weight has brought about a unique set of aeroelastic and handling quality issues. The aerodynamic forces and moments acting on an aeroplane have traditionally been represented using the aerodynamic derivative approach. It has been shown that this quasisteady aerodynamic model inadequately predicts the aircraft’s stability characteristics, and that the inclusion of unsteady aerodynamics “greatly improves the fidelity” of aircraft models. This thesis thus presents a novel numerical simulation of an aeroelastic aeroplane for real-time analysis. The model is built around the standard six degree-of-freedom equations of motion for a rigid aeroplane using the mean-axes system, and includes unsteady aerodynamics and structural dynamics. This is suitable for pilot-in-the-loop simulation, handling qualities and flight loads analysis, and control law development. The dynamics of the structure are modelled as a set of normal modes, and the equations of motion are realised in state-space form. The unsteady aerodynamic forces acting on the aeroplane are described by an indicial state-space model, including unsteady tailplane downwash and compressibility effects. An implementation of the model is presented in the MATLAB/ Simulink environment. The interaction between the flight control system, the aeroelastic system and the rigidbody motion of the aeroplane can result in degraded handling qualities, excessive actuator control, and fatigue problems. The introduction of load alleviation systems for the management of loads due to manoeuvres and gusts is also likely to result in the handling qualities of the aeroplane being degraded. This thesis presents a number of studies into the impact of structural dynamics, unsteady aerodynamics, and load alleviation on the handling qualities of a flexible civil transport aeroplane. The handling qualities of the aeroplane are assessed against a number of different handling qualities criteria and flying specifications, including the Neal-Smith, Bandwidth, and CAP criterion. It is shown that aeroelastic effects alter the longitudinal and lateral-directional characteristics of the aeroplane, resulting in degraded handling qualities. Manoeuvre and gust load alleviation are similarly found to degrade handling qualities, while active mode control is shown to offer the possibility of improved handling qualities.

L'objectif de cette étude est de résoudre les qualités de vol d'une aile volante long courrier, au stade de la conception avion. Le concept d'aile volante promet un gain important en terme de performances et de niveau de finesse par rapport aux configurations classiques. Ce gain est obtenu par l'intégration des quatre fonctions principales de l'avion (portance, contrôle, propulsion, transport) dans un seul corps. Ces choix de configuration entraînent des challenges à relever, dont l'obtention de qualités de vol respectant la certification. La configuration initiale étudiée présente de fortes instabilités longitudinales et latérales, une faible autorité en roulis, et des difficultés à effectuer la manœuvre de rotation au décollage. Dans cette étude sont proposées des solutions, combinant des surfaces de contrôle innovantes et des degrés de libertés originaux, qui tirent profit des avantages de la configuration. Les qualités de vols sont résolues dans un processus de résolution avec aussi peu de boucles que possible, et l'impact sur les performances est minimisé. En sortie de ce processus se trouve l'architecture de surface de contrôle optimisée, qui minimise l'impact des qualités de vol sur le coût de la mission. / The aim of this study is to solve the handling qualities problems of a long range blended wing body, at the conceptual design phase. That concept, also named flying wing in this report, is an aircraft which integrates the four aircraft functions (lift, control, propulsion, passengers transportation) in one single body. That configuration presents a benefit in cruise lift-over-drag ratio, as well as in noise emissions, due to the shielding effect provided by the inner wing to mask the engine noise.That configuration choice leads also to challenges. One of them is the handling qualities. The baseline studied flying wing presents initially longitudinal and lateral instabilities, as well as lack of roll manoeuvrability and difficulty to do the rotation at takeoff. In this report are proposed solutions, combining innovative control surfaces and original drivers, which are adapted to the configuration advantages. The handling qualitiesare solved in a resolution process with as few loops as possible, and the impact on the performances is minimized. The output of that process is the best control surfaces architecture and airfoils design which minimizes the impact of the handling qualities resolution on the cost of the mission.

La prochaine génération d’avions civil sera probablement une révolution en termede configuration d’avion, différant largement de l’architecture désormais classique “fuselage- ailes- moteurs sous voilure”. Du point de vue des qualités de vol, la tendance actuelle est d’évoluer versdes avions de moins en moins stables, à la fois en longitudinal et latéral. Il est dès lors probableque les futurs avions ne seront pas directement contrôlables par un humain sans l’apport de lois decommande stabilisantes. Il devient alors nécessaire de considérer l’apport des systèmes de commandesde vol très tôt dans la conception de l’avion, notamment pour le dimensionnement desempennages, gouvernes et actionneurs, contrairement au processus actuel qui ne prend principalementen compte que des critères “boucle ouverte” d’équilibre en phase de conception préliminaire.Plutôt qu’un processus itératif de dimensionnement puis synthèse de lois de commande, nousproposons d’optimiser simultanément les tailles de gouvernes, actionneurs et commandes de volen tenant compte des instabilités longitudinales et latérales, ainsi que des contraintes industriellessur la structure de correcteurs, sur un cas d’application de type aile volante. Ce processus de“co-design” permet de dimensionner des paramètres physiques de l’avion en tenant compte desapports d’une boucle de retour pour contrer des perturbations externes telles que de la turbulenceatmosphérique, permettant un avion plus sûr et optimal. / Next generation of civil transport aircraft is likely to be a radical change in overallconfiguration compared to traditional tube-and-wing design. From a handling qualities perspective,current trend in modern airliners is to evolve towards more and more unstable aircraft, bothfrom longitudinal and lateral-directional point of view. As a consequence future aircraft may notbe controllable by human operator without stabilizing control laws. It then becomes necessaryto consider flight control systems contribution early in the design phase for control surfaces,empennages and actuators sizing, as opposed to traditional way of working dealing only withopen-loop criteria for preliminary sizing. Instead of an iterative process of sizing and controllaws synthesis, we propose to concurrently optimize control surfaces, actuators and flight controllaws taking into account longitudinal and lateral instability as well as industrial structure forcontrollers, for unstable configurations such as Blended Wing-Body (BWB). This “co-design”procedure enables sizing of physical aircraft parameters taking into account benefits from feedbackstabilization for counteracting external disturbance such as atmospheric turbulence, thus leadingto safer and more optimal aircraft configurations.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le domaine de l’étude des lois de commandes de vol pour hélicoptères. Les automaticiens doivent régler les gains de ces lois de manière à respecter au mieux les exigences de Qualités de Pilotage extraites de la norme ADS-33. La norme traduit ces exigences en termes de critères de Qualités de Vol. Ils évaluent la qualité de la stabilité, de l'agilité, et du suivi des consignes du pilote par la machine. Ils traduisent la pilotabilité de l'hélicoptère pour un pilote « moyen » de référence. A part une technique d’optimisation interactive développée à la NASA et l'US Army depuis 40 ans, il n’existe pas de méthode appropriée à ce problème. Les réglages sont effectués de manière empirique et itérative. L’ONERA propose une approche méthodologique structurée. L’objectif de la thèse consiste à développer cette méthodologie de manière à gérer deux contraintes supplémentaires par rapport aux capacités des méthodes de synthèse classiques en automatique : la capacité à prendre en compte la structure contrainte des lois de commande et les exigences spécifiques en terme de Qualités de Vol selon la norme ADS-33.Une technique d'amélioration des Qualités de Vol par analyse de sensibilités entre les gains et les critères est développée. Puis une méthodologie d’initialisation des gains est proposée, via la création et l’utilisation efficace de nouveaux abaques de Qualités de Vol pour modèles équivalents simplifiés. Afin d'améliorer l'efficacité de ce réglage initial, deux contraintes supplémentaires sont prises en compte (énergie et découplage). Enfin, un processus complet de réglage est proposé : initialisation, ajustement linéaire et ajustement non linéaire. / This study is in the field of designing helicopter control laws. Designers must tune the gains of these laws in order to meet as much as possible Handling Qualities requirements from ADS-33. This standard translates these requirements in terms of Flying Qualities requirements. Then, we can evaluate the quality of the stability, of the quickness, and of the ability of the machine to follow the inputs from the pilot. Apart from an interactive optimization technique developed at NASA and US Army over the last 40 years, no appropriate method exists to solve this problem. Then, empirical iterative tunings are led. ONERA addresses this issue through a structured methodological approach. The aim of the thesis is to develop this methodology, taking into account two additional constraints compared with the capabilities of usual synthesis methods used in automatics: the capability to deal with the constraints from the control law structures and with the Handling Qualities requirements from the ADS-33 standards. A technique is developed to improve the Flying Qualities using sensitivity studies between gains and criteria. Then, a methodology to initialize the gains is developed, through the creation and the efficient usage of new Flying Qualities-based charts for equivalent simplified models. In order to improve the efficiency of the initial tuning, two additional constraints are taken into account (uncoupling and energy). Thus, a complete full procedure of tuning is proposed: initialization, linear adjustment and non linear adjustment.

A handling quality investigation was performed on the swept gull-wing configuration. The swept gull-wing configuration is tailless and has a wing with a transition in the sweep and dihedral angle. An example of this type of aircraft is the Exulans. This aircraft is currently under development at the University of Pretoria. The handling quality study was focussed on pitch axis dynamics. The Exulans is a research testbed that will be used to investigate the swept gull-wing configuration and its special controls by means of full-scale flight testing. Variable wing sweep, twisting elevons and winglets will be investigated as means of control. These control devices are configured in such a way as to have minimum impact on the performance of the aircraft. The handling qualities of the swept gull-wing configuration have to be acceptable while using these different control strategies. The study was launched to investigate whether a gull-wing configuration aircraft will have satisfactory handling qualities at CG positions associated with the most favourable aerodynamic performance. There is an aerodynamic performance gain in designing an aircraft so that the CG falls on the so-called `E-point'. The E-point is the centre of pressure for an elliptical circulation distribution. An elliptical circulation distribution is associated with the highest Oswald efficiency for an aircraft. Time domain simulation techniques and frequency domain analysis techniques were used to analyse the handling qualities of the gull-wing configuration. The C-star criterion was used to analyse handling qualities with time domain simulation data as input. Comparative time domain simulations were performed between the Exulans and other aircraft to compare handling qualities. Eigenvalue analysis was used together with the thumbprint criterion to investigate inherent gull-wing airframe dynamics. The Shomber-Gertsen and Military Specification 8785 criteria were also used for the same purpose. The Neal-Smith method was used to investigate the effect of control authority on handling qualities and the effect of a pilot. The Monnich and Dalldorff criterion was used to evaluate gust handling qualities. An analysis chart by Fremaux and Vairo was used to evaluate the tumbling susceptibility of the gull-wing configuration. The pitch handling quality investigation shows sufficient promise that the swept gull-wing configuration will have acceptable handling qualities with the CG placed at positions associated with optimised aerodynamic performance. Analysis showed that the swept gull-wing configuration is potentially prone to tumbling. With low static margins, the configuration should exhibit improved handling qualities in gusty conditions when compared to existing tailless aircraft. It is recommended that a lateral handling quality study be performed before full scale flight testing commences on the Exulans. In addition, the possibility of wingtip stall must be investigated for the case of the swept gull-wing configuration. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering / unrestricted

A helicopter can be used to transport a load hanging from a suspension cable. This technique is frequently used in construction, firefighting, and disaster relief operations, among other applications. Unfortunately, the suspended load swings, which makes load positioning difficult and can degrade control of the helicopter. This dissertation investigates the use of input shaping (a command-filtering technique for reducing vibration) to mitigate the load swing problem. The investigation is conducted using two different, but complementary, approaches. One approach studies manual tracking tasks, where a human attempts to make a cursor follow an unpredictably moving target. The second approach studies horizontal repositioning maneuvers on small-scale helicopter systems, including a novel testbed that limits the helicopter and suspended load to move in a vertical plane. Both approaches are used to study how input shaping affects control of a flexible element (the suspended load) and a driven base (the helicopter). In manual tracking experiments, conventional input shapers somewhat degraded control of the driven base but greatly improved control of the flexible element. New input shapers were designed to improve load control without negatively affecting base control. A method for adjusting the vibration-limiting aggressiveness of any input shaper between unshaped and fully shaped was also developed. Next, horizontal repositioning maneuvers were performed on the helicopter testbed using a human-pilot-like feedback controller from the literature, with parameter values scaled to match the fast dynamics of the model helicopter. It was found that some input shapers reduced settling time and peak load swing when applied to Attitude Command or Translational Rate Command response types. When the load was used as a position reference instead of the helicopter, the system was unstable without input shaping, and adding input shaping to a Translational Rate Command was able to stabilize the load-positioning system. These results show the potential to improve the safety and efficiency of helicopter suspended load operations.