Cessna Citation X Business Aircraft Eigenvalue Stability – Part2: Flight Envelope Analysis

• Main Authors: Yamina BOUGHARI, Ruxandra Mihaela BOTEZ, Florian THEEL, Georges GHAZI
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: National Institute for Aerospace Research “Elie Carafoli” - INCAS 2017-12-01
• Series: INCAS Bulletin
• Subjects: Eigenvalue Stability; Aeroelastic Stability; Flight Control Clearance; Robustness Analysis
• Online Access: http://bulletin.incas.ro/files/boughari__botez__theel__ghazi__vol_9_iss_4__part_2.pdf

Civil aircraft flight control clearance is a time consuming, thus an expensive process in the aerospace industry. This process has to be investigated and proved to be safe for thousands of combinations in terms of speeds, altitudes, gross weights, Xcg / weight configurations and angles of attack. Even in this case, a worst-case condition that could lead to a critical situation might be missed. To address this problem, models that are able to describe an aircraft’s dynamics by taking into account all uncertainties over a region within a flight envelope have been developed using Linear Fractional Representation. In order to investigate the Cessna Citation X aircraft Eigenvalue Stability envelope, the Linear Fractional Representation models are implemented using the speeds and the altitudes as varying parameters. In this paper Part 2, the aircraft longitudinal eigenvalue stability is analyzed in a continuous range of flight envelope with varying parameter of True airspeed and altitude, instead of a single point, like classical methods. This is known as the aeroelastic stability envelope, required for civil aircraft certification as given by the Circular Advisory “Aeroelastic Stability Substantiation of Transport Category Airplanes AC No: 25.629-18”. In this new methodology the analysis is performed in time domain based on Lyapunov stability and solved by convex optimization algorithms by using the linear matrix inequalities to evaluate the eigenvalue stability, which is reduced to search for the negative eigenvalues in a region of flight envelope. It can also be used to study the stability of a system during an arbitrary motion from one point to another in the flight envelope. A whole aircraft analysis results’ for its entire envelope are presented in the form of graphs, thus offering good readability, and making them easily exploitable.