State feedback stabilization of an elastic aircraft motion

This paper deals with the stabilization of motion of an airplane with structural elasticity. In most control problems associated with the motion of an airplane, rigid body equations of motion are employed to design the control law. This approach is suitable when the structure is sufficiently stiff. However, when the structural flexibility is dominant, the controller designed for rigid body dynamics is not suitable. The elastic behavior of the structure must be incorporated in the control law design to control the motion of the airplane as well as the behavior of elastic modes. In this paper, the rigid body equations of motion are combined with the elastic mode equations of motion to design the control law. The full state feedback gain is determined using the conventional Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) method.