A software tool for robustness analysis in plant parameters space (ROBAN)

The modern control configurated vehicle (CCV) design technologies aims at taking simultaneously into account performances and maneuvrability requirements, and handling quality specifications. Therefore it is very important to provide the modern stability and control engineers with a tool which allows to determine the maximum allowable range of aircraft parameter variation according to handling quality requirements. In this paper some applications of the software ROBAN, developed at the Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali (CIRA), are illustrated. ROBAN has been developed to analyse stability and performances (in terms of eigenvalues location on the complex plane) of linear systems subject to uncertain parameters, and has been shown to be particularly useful to deal with the robustness problems which arise in the flight control field. In particular, after a description of the algorithm, the applications of ROBAN to analyse (a) Robustness in flight conditions, (b) Robustness against sensor failures, (c) Robustness with respect to PIO (pilot-induced oscillations) are discussed.