Supersonic Aircraft Modeling & Flight Controls

Overview

My Georgia Tech Supersonics work covered two separate aircraft and questions: whether Cobra had acceptable natural stability characteristics, and how Kestrel's outer-loop controller should command the broader control architecture.

My contribution

For Cobra, I developed OpenVSP and AVL geometry and aerodynamic models, using stability derivatives, trim, and linearized behavior to assess whether the configuration was naturally stable. For Kestrel, I designed cascaded PID outer loops in MATLAB and Simulink that produced virtual rate commands and interfaced with the broader nonlinear-dynamic-inversion architecture. I did not develop the internals of the nonlinear dynamic inversion implementation.

Challenge

Cobra needed a defensible natural-stability assessment from its aerodynamic derivatives, while the separate Kestrel effort needed an outer-loop control architecture that could integrate with the team's existing inner-layer design.

Technical approach

I used OpenVSP and AVL to develop Cobra geometry and aerodynamic models, examine stability derivatives, and evaluate trim and linearized static and dynamic stability behavior. Separately, I built Kestrel's MATLAB/Simulink cascaded PID outer-loop concept around virtual rate commands that fed into the broader nonlinear-dynamic-inversion interface.