Optimization Based Clearance of Flight Control Laws: A Civil Aircraft Application

The overall objective of the COFCLUO project was to develop and apply optimization techniques to the clearance of flight control laws in order to improve efficiency and reliability. In the book, the new techniques are explained and benchmarked against traditional techniques currently used by the industry. The new techniques build on mathematical criteria derived from the certification and qualification requirements together with suitable models of the aircraft. The development of these criteria and models are also presented in the book.

Because of wider applicability, the optimization-based clearance of flight control laws will open up the possibility to design innovative aircraft that today are out of the scope using classical clearance tools. Optimization-based clearance will not only increase safety but it will also simplify the whole certification and qualification process, thus significantly reduce cost. The achieved speedup will also support rapid modeling and prototyping and reduce “time to market”.