Aerospace: Flight Control

The design, simulation, integration, and flight testing of flight control systems for modern aircraft constitutes a series of challenging multidisciplinary tasks that factor significantly in the overall time and cost of aircraft development.

The US Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate, in conjunction with the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), have jointly developed a modern integrated tool set that addresses such technical challenges:

CIFER® (Comprehensive Identification from FrEquency Responses), a system identification tool based on a comprehensive frequency-response approach that is uniquely suited to the difficult problems associated with flight test data analysis.

CONDUIT® (CONtrol Designer's Unified InTerface), a state-of-the-art flight control design and optimization tool that allows the user to rapidly evaluate and optimize designs against relevant performance specifications and design criteria.

RIPTIDE (Real-time Interactive Prototype Technology Integration Development Environment), a high fidelity desktop simulation tool which provides a platform for rapid piloted simulation evaluation of the control law design.

Key advantages of the toolset:

• unique and integrated design environment that seamlessly brings together all relevant engineering disciplines under one common modeling platform
• offers potential for significant reduction in time and cost of design, optimization, and simulation of modern flight control systems

News Flash:
The CONDUIT® team is having a 3-day training course from March 24 to 26, 2009, at the Hyatt Regency Regency Santa Clara. (see details here)

Contact Information:
Technical Contact – Dr. Mark Tischler (Senior Scientist, US Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate), Mark.Tischler@us.army.mil
Software Contact – Kenny Cheung (Principal Flight Control Software Engineer/Task Manager, UARC), Kenny.Cheung@us.army.mil