• Mr. Brian Danowsky
  • Systems Technology, Incorporated
  • Holden Auditorium (Room 112)
  • 4:00 p.m.
  • Faculty Host: Dr. Rakesh Kapania and Dr. Kevin Wang

High fidelity modeling of aeroservoelastic aircraft with both rigid body and flexible dynamics is achieved using Computational Fluid Dynamics coupled with Computational Structural Dynamic (CFD/CSD) models. This modeling approach has advantages over potential flow-based modeling approaches in directly capturing unique dynamic aspects of vehicles that have significant coupling between rigid body and flexible dynamics. Full order CFD/CSD models require significant computational processing and memory, making them unsuitable for control design. An efficient approach has been developed that generates input-to-output reduced order state space models directly from these high order models. These reduced order models represent significant computational savings in both time and memory. They are ideal for control design and they capture the critical dynamic aspects associated with these highly coupled vehicles. This approach is applied to a small flexible aircraft designed specifically for aeroservoelastic research. The advantages and unique aspects of this approach are highlighted.

Biography:

Mr. Brian Danowsky (M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Iowa State University, 2004; B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Iowa State University, 2002). Mr. Danowsky is a Principal Research Engineer at Systems Technology, Incorporated, where he has been since 2007. His main areas of expertise are dynamic modeling and simulation of air vehicles, flight control and guidance systems, robust stability and control, aeroelasticity, aeroservoelasticity and aerodynamic parameter estimation. Flight vehicles of study at STI have consisted of high altitude lighter-than-air vehicles as well as high speed fighter aircraft. Mr. Danowsky is currently and has been the principal investigator for numerous government programs in the areas of aeroelasticity and aeroservoelasticity for NASA, the US Air Force, the US Navy, and the US Army. Research objectives for these programs consist of incorporating active feedback control into very high fidelity coupled computational fluid dynamic and computational structural dynamic models, reduced order modeling capability, aeroelastic uncertainty analysis, adaptive aeroservoelastic suppression, nonlinear aeroservoelastic free-play analysis, and buffet load measurement. Mr. Danowsky received the Dave Ward Memorial Lecture Award from the Aerospace Control and Guidance Systems Committee in 2013 for technical contributions to aeroservoelastic control. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and is an active member of the AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Technical Committee. He is also a member of the Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Gamma Tau national honor societies.