Join Zoom Meeting | https://ucla.zoom.us/j/950832082 | Meeting ID: 950 832 082

Abstract: A variety of novel aerospace vehicle concepts are being investigated for greener civil transport aviation and autonomous flight applications. These concepts feature high-aspect-ratio wings and unconventional configurations to achieve revolutionary performance improvements while meeting restrictive mission requirements. However, they may exhibit tightly coupled flight dynamics and aeroelastic response along with nonlinear effects that pose formidable development and operation challenges.

Computation-based design and model-based control have the potential to enable novel aerospace vehicles by mitigating undesirable behaviors while keeping performance. These tools necessitate interpretable multidisciplinary models able to describe innovative vehicle configurations with fidelity and analysis cost suited to time-critical computations.

This talk will introduce low-order models that combine physics-based formulations with numerical data for describing configurations that exhibit geometrically nonlinear behaviors and tightly coupled flight dynamics and aeroelastic response. Ongoing research will be also presented that focuses on utilizing these models for developing the next-generation civil transport aircraft with high-aspect-ratio wings. The talk will end with open challenges for enabling novel aerospace vehicles using computation-based design and active control, and outline research needs in the area of multidisciplinary modeling of flight dynamics and nonlinear aeroelasticity.

Bio: Cristina Riso received her Ph.D. from Sapienza University of Rome in 2018 and is currently a Research Fellow in the Airbus-Michigan Center for Aero-Servo-Elasticity of Very Flexible Aircraft in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. Her research interests are in the area of computational aeroelasticity and flight dynamics of flexible aircraft. Her current research focuses on integrating geometrically nonlinear effects and dynamic aeroelasticity into aircraft design optimization and on investigating novel aeroelastic tailoring strategies for improving aircraft maneuverability while alleviating gust and maneuver loads.