Flight Envelope Expansion via Active Control Solutions for a Generic Tailless Aircraft

Aircraft dynamics at high angles of attack due to loss of stability and control essentially limits its manoeuvrability. Modern control systems implement flight envelope protection at the cost of maneuverability to improve safety in these conditions. Flight envelope boundaries, which are set taking into account deterioration of stability and controllability due to separated flow, can be expanded by appropriate design of control laws. However, such a design requires extensive analysis of the maneuver envelope of the airframe and its utilization by the flight envelope protection laws. The reliability of this analysis depends on the adequate aerodynamic modeling which captures nonlinear unsteady variation of aerodynamic loads in these flight regimes. Two novel models for unsteady aerodynamics at low and high subsonic Mach numbers are described. These models and prototyping control laws are used for closed loop computational analysis. The computational methodology of clearing flight control laws for flight envelope expansion of a Generic Tailless Aircraft (GTA) is addresse