Allocation of distributed flaps for gust load alleviation

Increasing the number and functionality of control surfaces provides great potential to improve aircraft performance. This, however, complicates the design of the control allocation system commonly used for flight control. A novel method for linear control allocation is presented which allows considering an arbitrary number of frequency dependent control objectives. The method systematically identifies principal control input directions for predefined performance channels by means of a balancing state space transformation. The effectiveness of the method is proven by designing a gust load alleviation system for a flexible aircraft with distributed trailing edge flaps.