15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
REDUCING STRUCTURAL COUPLING ON A FLEXIBLE BEAM USING KALMAN FILTERS
S.A. Halsey*, R.M. Goodall*, J.T. Pearson*, B.D. Caldwell+
* Systems and Control Research Group, Loughborough University, Loughborough,
LEICS, LE11 3TU, UK. Email: s.a.halsey@lboro.ac.uk, r.m.goodall@lboro.ac.uk,
i.t.pearson@lboro.ac.uk
+ BAE Systems, Warton Aerodrome, Preston, LANCS, PR4 1AX, UK.
Email: brian.caldwell@baesystems.com

Structural coupling is the disturbance to the aircrafts inertial sensors caused by the flexibility in the airframe, and is particularly problematic for modern combat aircraft. The current solution uses a series of notch filters to remove the structural frequencies, but these introduce significant phase delays into the control loop. This paper presents some experimental and theoretical results from a flexible beam, and the use of Kalman filters to reduce the effects of structural coupling. This work is part of an ongoing project in conjunction with BAE Systems.
Keywords: Structural Coupling, Aerospace, Flight Control, and Kalman Filtering
Session slot T-Th-E21: Posters of Transportation and Vehicles/Area code 8a : Aerospace