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Development of Nonlinear Flight Mechanical Model of High Aspect Ratio

Light Utility Aircraft
To cite this article: S Bahri and R A Sasongko 2018 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1005 012022

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

Development of Nonlinear Flight Mechanical Model of High

Aspect Ratio Light Utility Aircraft

S Bahri1),2),3) * and R A Sasongko2)

1) Aeronautic Technology Center, National Institute of Aeronautics and Space
(LAPAN), Indonesia
2) Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Bandung Institute of
Technology (ITB), Indonesia
3) Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Berlin Institute of Technology (TU
Berlin), Germany
*[email protected]

Abstract. The implementation of Flight Control Law (FCL) for Aircraft Electronic Flight
Control System (EFCS) aims to reduce pilot workload, while can also enhance the control
performance during missions that require long endurance flight and high accuracy maneuver. In
the development of FCL, a quantitative representation of the aircraft dynamics is needed for
describing the aircraft dynamics characteristic and for becoming the basis of the FCL design.
Hence, a 6 Degree of Freedom nonlinear model of a light utility aircraft dynamics, also called
the nonlinear Flight Mechanical Model (FMM), is constructed. This paper shows the
construction of FMM from mathematical formulation, the architecture design of FMM, the
trimming process and simulations. The verification of FMM is done by analysis of aircraft
behaviour in selected trimmed conditions.

1. Introduction
The development of Electronic Flight Control System (EFCS) is conducted inside the cooperation
between LAPAN and TU Berlin whose purpose is to build a demonstrator aircraft named LAPAN
Surveillance Aircraft (LSA-02). The aircraft selected is a light utility single engine aircraft with payload
capability up to 350 kg (see Figure 1). The original mechanical flight control system is modified with
EFCS to provide full authority to reduce pilot work load and enhance control performance especially
during extreme tasks such long endurance flight and high accuracy maneuver. The development of
Flight Control Law (FCL) for the Basic EFCS (BEFCS) is conducted to realize the attitude control and
flight path control for the LSA-02[8][9]. Other development that is navigation control shall be assigned
as the experimental FCL. The development of basic FCL employs a strict development process namely
V model development process [1].
The development of basic FCL can be only realized when an accurate model of the aircraft
dynamics is available. Assumed as a rigid body, the real aircraft has six degrees of freedom and possess
dynamic nonlinearity. Hence, to mimic the real aircraft response and characteristics, the flight
mechanical model (FMM) needs to be supported by accurate data such as mechanical properties data
(mass, inertias, CG. position, etc.), propulsion system data, and also aerodynamic and stability
derivatives coefficients. Since at initial stage some data may be confidential or proprietary which are
difficult to obtain, then prediction techniques and assumptions will be used for reconstructing the
required data.

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Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

The development of FMM considers numerous aspects but it usually starts with the definition of
the equations of motion. In addition, the accurate representation of the atmosphere variables should also
be considered to provide realistic atmospheric effects to the aircraft response during flight. Furthermore,
the contribution of disturbance may be added to the aircraft motion. The formulation of forces and
moments coefficients are essential and unique for each aircraft especially for aerodynamic forces and
moments coefficients. These may be the most valuable data for an aircraft and often they are
confidential. However, some prediction tools may be used to estimate the aerodynamic coefficients
including the stability derivatives, which to some degree may help at the early stage of the FMM
development. Later in the development process, the data from wind tunnel tests or ultimately the flight
tests shall be used for validating the FMM. The propulsion parameters may be easier to acquire from
the engine data. However, some parameters can only obtained by means ground tests or flight tests.
Other variables like acceleration and load factor shall be included as well in the FMM to provide
valuable information especially if the acceleration or load factor exceed the threshold of airframe
structural strength, which may be a threat for the safety of human on board.

Figure 1. Aircraft STEMME ES15 which is modified with EFCS to become LSA-02 [1].

The main structure of a FMM may be generic and can be adjusted for some different types of
aircraft. . However, as the aircraft possesses huge number of parameters which are related to its specific
characteristics and the flight regimes it may cover, , the development of FMM shall be carried out
independently and exclusively for a specific aircraft.
The research objectives of the work presented in this paper are to develop a nonlinear flight
mechanical model of LSA-02 aircraft and to verify the flight dynamic characteristics of the aircraft,
especially the natural Eigen mode responses from the flight simulation. This paper shows the
construction of FMM, including the definition its dynamic variables, the mathematical formulation, and
the architecture design of FMM numerical representation using SIMULINK. In addition, a trimming
method for longitudinal and lateral motions and the dynamic response of the FMM are also simulated
and presented.

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

2. Formulation of FMM
It is important to firstly define clear terminology used in FMM development [2]. The formulation of
FMM involves four main coordinate systems, i.e. geodetic, aerodynamic, kinetic and body-fixed
coordinate systems (see Figure 2).
The equations of motion mostly is described in body-fixed coordinate system. The forces equation
is the summation of the forces come from the weight of the aircraft, the thrust of the engine and the
aerodynamic forces. The thrust is assumed to work coincidently in body-fixed axis 𝑥𝑓 which generates
no moments. Hence, the moments equation only comes from aerodynamic moments. The airspeed is
obtained from the flight path velocity subtracted with the wind velocity. The Euler angles or the attitude
angles are calculated from angular rates. The geodetic position is obtained from calculated ground speed.
xg xf xa


xf   xk


xk

 xa
xg

yg
zg
Figure 2. Flight mechanical angles with respect to the coordinate systems.
There are six aerodynamic forces and moments coefficients which are firstly calculated before
computing the aerodynamic forces and moments. These coefficients derivatives are explained in [3]
and can be written to be
𝐶𝐴2 (1)
𝐶𝑊 = 𝐶𝑊0 +
𝜋Λ𝑒
𝑝𝑓 𝑠 𝑟𝑓 𝑠 (2)
𝐶𝑄 = 𝐶𝑄𝛽 𝛽 + 𝐶𝑄𝑝 ( ) + 𝐶𝑄𝑟 ( ) + 𝐶𝑄𝜉 𝜉 + 𝐶𝑄𝜁 𝜁
𝑉 𝑉
𝐶𝐴 = 𝐶𝐴0 + 𝐶𝐴𝛼 𝛼 + 𝐶𝐴𝛼𝐾 𝜂𝐾 (3)
𝑝𝑓 𝑠 𝑟𝑓 𝑠 (4)
𝐶𝑙 = 𝐶𝑙𝛽 𝛽 + 𝐶𝑙𝑝 ( ) + 𝐶𝑙𝑟 ( ) + 𝐶𝑙𝜉 𝜉 + 𝐶𝑙𝜁 𝜁
𝑉 𝑉
𝐶𝑚 = 𝐶𝑚0 + 𝐶𝑚𝛼 𝛼 + 𝐶𝑚𝜂 𝜂 (5)
𝑝𝑓 𝑠 𝑟𝑓 𝑠 (6)
𝐶𝑛 = 𝐶𝑛𝛽 𝛽 + 𝐶𝑛𝑝 ( ) + 𝐶𝑛𝑟 ( ) + 𝐶𝑛𝜉 𝜉 + 𝐶𝑛𝜁 𝜁
𝑉 𝑉
Here, the coefficient index W is drag, Q is side, A is lift. The control surfaces deflection of aileron,
elevator, rudder and flaps are denoted respectively with 𝜉, 𝜂, 𝜁 and 𝜂𝐾 . Other coefficients e.g.
𝐶𝑊0 , Λ, 𝑒, 𝐶𝑄𝛽 , 𝐶𝑄𝑝 , etc. on Equation (1)-(6) are defined following the description in [6].

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

Engine power vs throttle position

70

60
Pe,kW = 0.7687F,% - 3.3688
50
Pe [kW]

40

30

20
Pe,kW = 1.2371F,% - 17
10

0
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
 [%]
F
Figure 3. Relation between the engine power and the throttle position.
The thrust force equation is derived from the engine data [4]. Here, it is assumed that the throttle
position is proportional to the fuel consumption. Mapping the engine rotation with the throttle position
will result the engine power. The thrust force is calculated by equation (7).
𝜂̅𝑝 𝑃𝑒 (7)
𝐹=
𝑉
where 𝜂̅𝑝 is propeller efficiency, 𝑃𝑒 is engine power and 𝑉 is airspeed. The propeller efficiency is
assumed to be constant and is given to be 0.85. The construction of relation chart between throttle
position and the engine power is displayed in Error! Reference source not found..
The atmospheric variables are assumed to follow the international standard atmosphere (ISA).
The variables required are geopotential height, static pressure, temperature and air density. The
geometric height or the altitude is obtained from geodetic position which may be computed by solving
the navigational parts of the equations of motion.

3. Architecture of FMM
The FMM consists of several subsystems which will be continuously developed. The existing
subsystems are namely the command subsystem, trim control subsystem, aircraft subsystem and output
subsystem. However, the FMM emphasizes more to the aircraft subsystem or the aircraft model. The
original aircraft model receives command signals from the input model and produces responses to the
output model.

Input Aircraft Output

Figure 4. The aircraft model with input and output models.

The environment model is included inside the aircraft model or the aircraft subsystem while the
disturbance model is included in the input subsystem. The FMM is realized by means of Simulink /
MATLAB applications. The block diagram of the aircraft model and its architecture are depicted in
Figure 5.

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

Equations
Environment Kinematics Integrator
Of Motion

Initial
Conditions

Figure 5. Block diagram of the aircraft model (top) and the Simulink model of the aircraft (bottom).
All sub-subsystems of the aircraft model are derived based on the formulation of FMM which has
been previously developed. Environment sub-subsystem comprises wind speed and ISA atmosphere
data computation. Kinematics block calculates airspeed and ground speed. Equations of motion sub-
subsystem block consists of forces, moments and states computation. The forces and moments block
include the weight, propulsion, aerodynamics and inertial data and computation. The integrator sub-
subsystem integrates the state derivatives resulted from the equations of motion. There are four
derivatives obtained from the integrator sub-subsystem, i.e. flight path speed, angular rate, attitude and
position derivatives.

4. Trimming the Aircraft Model

The next phase after building the aircraft model is to compute the trimmed condition of the aircraft.
Trimmed condition is when the resultant of forces and moments are zeros. This means the aircraft is on
steady flight condition either in longitudinal or lateral motion. There are many techniques to trim the
aircraft, even Simulink MATLAB offers the automatic trim application directly from the developed
model. Here, the trimming method is proposed by means of FCL implementation. For this purpose, the
FCL for trimming the aircraft model is called by the trim control subsystem and form a closed system.
Therefore, the FMM is expanded by introducing the command and trim control subsystems. The
previous input subsystem is included inside the trim control subsystem.

Trim
Command Aircraft Output
Control

Figure 6. The block diagram of expanded FMM with introduction of trim control subsystem (top) and the
Simulink model (bottom).

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

The trim control subsystem has purpose of computing the required commands for the control
surfaces to trim the aircraft in longitudinal and lateral motion. The trim control in this report is essentially
the cascade of the flight-path control and attitude control, which are employed as a means to trim the
aircraft, hence the required control surfaces deflection are obtained. Therefore, their implementations
only concern the steady state responses of the aircraft. The trim control, based on its function, is divided
into two controls, i.e. longitudinal motion control and lateral motion control. The longitudinal control
consists of the flight-path velocity control and the altitude control, while the lateral control comprises
the angle of sideslip control and heading control. Here, the proportional and integral gains are used as
controller. The block diagram of trim control is displayed from Figure 7 to Figure 10.

VK ,c  F ,c VK
FFcVKc Aircraft

Figure 7. The block diagram of flight path velocity control.

h
hc F c hc
c
Fc c
c
Fcc
c
Aircraft



Figure 8. The block diagram of altitude control.

c c 
F c  c Aircraft

Figure 9. The block diagram of angle of sideslip control.

F c  c c
c c 
F c c Aircraft


Figure 10. The block diagram of heading control.

The integration between the flight-path velocity control, altitude control, angle of sideslip control,
and azimuth control is implemented in trim control subsystem and is displayed in Figure 11.

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

Figure 11. The Simulink model of the trim control.

Initially, the trimming of the aircraft subsystem is carried out for the longitudinal motion, and
then is continued for the lateral motion. The longitudinal motion is trimmed by maintaining flight path
velocity and altitude. The flight path velocity is realized by the throttle position while the altitude is
realized by the elevator. The lateral motion is trimmed by maintaining the angle of sideslip. The angle
of sideslip is realized by the rudder while the zero heading angle is realized by the aileron.
In this work, for the longitudinal trimming, the flight path velocity chosen are 130, 160, and 190
km/h while the altitude is fixed at 1000 m. The lateral motion is trimmed by maintaining the angle of
side slip and the heading angle. The angle of side slip chosen are -10, -5, 0, 5, and 10 degrees, while the
heading is fixed at 0 degree. The results of longitudinal and lateral trimming are the steady state values
and required control inputs (control surface deflection).
pitch rate yaw rate
2 5
1 2
q [dps]

r [dps]

-1
0
-4
-1
-7
-2 -10
0 6 12 18 24 30 0 6 12 18 24 30
Angle of attack Angle of sideslip
4 4
3 3
 [deg]

 [deg]

2 2
1 1
0 0
0 6 12 18 24 30 0 6 12 18 24 30
Flight path velocity roll rate
140 0
135 -1
V [km/h]

p [dps]

130 -2
K

125 -3
120 -4
0 6 12 18 24 30 0 6 12 18 24 30
Inclination angle Bank angle
4 10
2
 [deg]

 [deg]

-10
0
-2 -30

-4 -50
0 6 12 18 24 30 0 6 12 18 24 30

Elevator Aileron
0 2
 
-2 1
 [deg]


 [deg]

trim 
0 trim
-4
-1
-6 -2
0 6 12 18 24 30 0 6 12 18 24 30
t [s] t [s]

Figure 12. Example of flight simulation. Open loop responses of longitudinal motion (left) and lateral motion
(right).

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

After that, the open loop response is examined to identify the natural behavior of the aircraft
model. From trimming values, the disturbance is excited so that the response of the aircraft can be
observed. The simulation result for disturbed trimming condition can be seen from Figure 12.
From Figure 12 on the left column, the step input of 1 degree is given to the trimmed elevator
deflection. The longitudinal motion consists of two Eigen modes, i.e. short period mode and phugoid
mode. The short period can be clearly observed from the pitch rate response around the first two seconds
after elevator excitation. The angle of attack although slower response than the pitch rate, but the short
period can be distinguished as well within the same time. After two seconds the phugoid appears in all
states. From this simulation we can qualitatively estimate that the short period has frequency of 0.5 Hz
or around 3 rad/s (because the period is around 2 seconds) while the phugoid has frequency of 0.05 Hz
or around 0.3 rad/s (because the period is around 20 seconds). For further examination, the Eigenvalues
and Eigenvectors of the linearized system can be computed and compared to the nonlinear simulation
results
Figure 12 on right column shows the state variables response from the step input of 1 degree from
the aileron. The aileron excites the rolling motion in the aircraft which is represented by the roll rate
and the bank angle responses. The nature of the aircraft is unstable typically because of the spiral mode.
The spiral mode is mainly reflected by, from the simulation, the bank angle response. This explains that
the bank angle keeps diverging away from zero. The roll mode is depicted from the roll rate but
surprisingly it shows slight oscillation which probably is caused by low roll damper 𝐶𝑙𝑝 value. . The
Dutch-roll can be clearly seen from the response of the yaw rate around the first two seconds. The
weaker Dutch-roll can be observed as well from the angle of sideslip response.
After investigating the open loop responses, the next step is to investigate the trimming curve.
The longitudinal and lateral trimming results are observed. The relationships selected for the
longitudinal motion are elevator versus flight-path velocity and angle of attack versus flight-path
velocity. On the other hand, the relationships selected for the lateral motion are aileron versus angle of
sideslip and rudder versus angle of sideslip. The result of trimming curves are given in Figure 13.
Elevator, angle of attack vs flight path velocity Aileron, rudder vs angle of sideslip
3 12
10
2
8
1
6
0 4
 [deg],  [deg]

 [deg], [deg]

-1 2
0
-2
-2
-3 -4

-4 -6

 -8
-5 
 -10 
-6 -12
120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
V [km/h]  [deg]
K

Figure 13. Trimming curve of the elevator, angle of attack with flight path velocity (left) and Trimming curve of
the aileron, rudder with the angle of sideslip (right).
From Figure 13 on the left, the relation for elevator and angle of attack with the flight path velocity
in longitudinal motion is non-linear. The angle of attack is positive when the flight path velocity is low
which explains that the aircraft needs more lift force to fly in low speed. The angle of attack gradually
decrease to reduce the lift contribution when the flight path velocity is increased. The elevator has
purpose to hold the pitch angle so that the flight path inclination stays at zero. When the flight path
velocity is low, the elevator is negative to produce positive pitching moment until the altitude is
maintained. If elevator is kept fixed while the flight path velocity is increased, the aircraft will climb

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5th International Seminar of Aerospace Science and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1005 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012022 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1005/1/012022

and the altitude command will fail. Therefore, to maintain the altitude the elevator will increase (from
negative to positive) as the flight path velocity is increased.
From Figure 13 on the right, the relation for aileron and rudder with the angle of sideslip in lateral
motion seems to be linear. The aileron has purpose to compensate the yawing moment caused rudder
deflection. The rudder deflection also causes the rolling moment which is needed to be anticipated by
aileron. The aileron has smaller deflection because of long lever arm that is wing. On the other hand, to
achieve angle of sideslip command, the rudder is seen to have relatively proportional deflection. In
addition, the flight path velocity in longitudinal motion does not affect the relationship in lateral motion.
This is because the aircraft is laterally commanded when the longitudinal motion is already trimmed.

5. Conclusions
Some conclusions drawn from this paper are
The development of the nonlinear flight mechanical model of high aspect ratio light utility aircraft
has been done. This is shown by the formulation and architecture design of the nonlinear flight
mechanical model
Trimming points aircraft model have been selected and the flight simulation verifies the natural
Eigen mode responses of the real aircraft. The real aircraft has all stable Eigen modes except for spiral
mode which is slightly unstable.
For further investigation, some work can be suggested, i.e. utilization of more comprehensive and
accurate stability and control derivatives, computation of trimmed aircraft on more variation of flight
condition.

References
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