Observer-based gust load alleviation via reduced-order models

In this paper, we investigate the design of linear active output feedback control for aircraft gust load alleviation, involving standard sensors and control surfaces. The control architecture is composed of (i) a robust observer, allowing for estimating some wing bending moments despite the wind perturbation, and (ii) a structured H-infinity-norm oriented control law exploiting this additional information. To cope with the complexity of the aeroelastic model and make the control and observer synthesis computationally tractable, a model reduction step, based on Petrov-Galerkin projections, is first applied. One specificity of this work is that the obtained projector is exploited in the observer design, linking the reduction and the estimation. The effectiveness of the methodology is illustrated through numerical simulation involving an open access high complexity aeroelastic model. Copyright (C) 2022 The Authors.