Instructed by Dr. Mark Tischler and Dr. Tom Berger
- From 16–19 November 2026 (4 Days, 4 Classes, 20 Hours)
- Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday at 11:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Eastern Time
- Classes will be recorded and available for replay; course notes and student software for hands-on exercises will be available for download
- The course will be a combination of lectures, interspersed with associated hands-on lab exercises (aircraft and rotorcraft) to be completed by the students on their own computers using a 2-month trial of the CONDUIT® Pro version, provided with the course.
- Course will include technical examples based on conventional and high-speed rotorcraft, UAV, and eVTOL for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and package delivery
- All registrants will receive an eBook copy of the instructors’ AIAA textbook Practical Methods for Aircraft and Rotorcraft Flight Control Design: An Optimization Based Approach (Tischler et al., AIAA, 2017).
- All students will receive an AIAA Certificate of Completion at the end of the course
OVERVIEW
The course will be a combination of lectures, interspersed with associated hands-on lab exercises (aircraft and rotorcraft) to be completed by the students on their own computers using CONDUIT® Professional version (2-month trial provided with course). While our design approach is based on multi-objective parametric optimization, we intend that course attendees who use a different design method will still find the course a useful and comprehensive presentation of well-validated flight-control principles and rules of thumb. This course should challenge the practicing engineer to consider where their flight-control processes can be improved or augmented. The many examples from recent piloted and UAV aircraft programs illustrate the effectiveness of this technology for rapidly solving difficult integration problems. A special dedicated section has been added to cover the challenges and technology solutions for the small eVTOL and full-scale AAM applications. Also, while we refer to the basic tenets of feedback control theory, our focus in this course is on reducing the theoretical methods of aircraft and rotorcraft flight control to design practice for students and working-level engineers.
- Present our extensive experience and lessons learned into a single comprehensive and practical short course for academia and working-level flight control engineers.
- Review of best practices in the selection of handling qualities and flight control specifications, simulation modeling and fidelity assessment, and flight control design and analysis methods.
- Demonstrate how flight dynamics and control theory is brought to practice by reviewing many historical aircraft and rotorcraft piloted and UAV flight control design case studies and lessons learned.
- Step-by-step presentation of multi-objective parametric optimization design using Feasible Sequential Quadratic Programming (FSQP), with a focus on how to apply this method to real-world flight control design problems.
- Special challenges, methods, and recent results for military high-speed rotorcraft, UAV, and eVTOL applications to AAM and package delivery.
- Demonstrate the optimization of a wide range of classical and modern control design methods (PID, model following, dynamic inverse, LQR, H-infinity) to meet a common set of design requirements using the multi-objective parametric optimization method and compare the resulting performance and robustness.
- Hands-on exercises by the students on aircraft and rotorcraft flight control examples using CONDUIT® to reinforce methods and get real-time experience with software and see the results.
- See detailed outline/schedule below
AUDIENCE
This course is intended for aerospace engineering faculty, students, and for practicing aircraft and rotorcraft flight dynamics and control system engineers. A basic knowledge of flight dynamics and control fundamentals, methods, and flight control concepts is assumed. However, the attendee is not expected to be an expert, and the course will not contain advanced mathematics. This course should challenge the practicing engineer to consider where their flight-control processes can be improved or augmented with the design requirements and methods of simulation, design, and analysis as presented and illustrated herein.
COURSE
REGISTRATION FEES (Sign-In to Register)
AIAA Member
Price: USD $1,095
AIAA Student
Member Price: USD $595
Non-Member Price: USD $1,295
REGISTRATION DEADLINE
Students should register no
later than 26
October to
ensure enough time for the software administrator to distribute the CONDUIT® software and for the student to install and validate it.
To receive the CONDUIT® software, you will need to register with your
institutional email address (e.g., company, research lab, academic) and not a
personal email. Please note that access to the software is at the
discretion of the software distributor.
COURSE OUTLINE:
· Section 1. Introduction: The Flight Control Problem and Our Approach
o Roles of Flight Control System and the Development Process
o Flight Control System Design Challenges and Reference Material–Seven Key Do’s
o Flight Control System Design Using Multi-Objective Parametric Optimization: Why is this a Good Approach?
· Section 2. Fundamentals of Control System Design Methodology Based on Multi-Objective Parametric Optimization
o Roadmap of Multi-Objective Parametric Optimization Design Methodology
o Typical Results Based on XV-15 Hover Case Study
o Typical Results Based on XV-15 Forward Flight Case Study
· Section 3. Overview of CONDUIT® Software
o The CONDUIT® Interface, Overview of CONDUIT® Workflow
o Problem Setup, Modes of Operation, and Integration with Other Tools
· Section 4. Description of XV-15 Design Case Studies
o XV-15 Hover and Forward Flight Case Studies
· Section 5. Quantitative Design Requirements for Flight Control
o Importance and Sources of Design Requirements and the Cooper-Harper Scale
o Specifications: Generic, Rotorcraft, Fixed-Wing, User Defined, and Performance Metrics
o Flight control criteria for next generation high-speed military rotorcraft
o Criteria Sets for XV-15 Hover and Forward Flight Case Studies
· Section 6. Simulation Requirements for Flight Control Design
o Modeling Fidelity Requirements and Use of a Simplified Block Diagram
o Linear Bare-Airframe Models, Additional Components, Nonlinearities and Analysis Validation
· Section 7. Conceptual and Preliminary Design of Flight Control Systems
o Control Law Architectures
o Preliminary Design of Feedback Compensation
· Section 8. Design Optimization
o Need and Challenge of Numerical Optimization of Flight Control Design
o Numerical Scores for the Specifications and Numerical Optimization of the Design
o Guidelines for Flight Control Optimization Results for the XV-15 Hover and Forward Flight Case Studies
· Section 9. Sensitivity and Robustness Analyses
o Sensitivity Analysis of the Design Solution and results for XV-15 Hover and Forward Flight
o Assessing Robustness to Modeling Uncertainty
· Section 10. Design Trade-offs
o Design Margin Optimization (DMO)
o Nested-Loop Design Margin Optimization Strategy for the XV-15 Hover and Forward Flight
· Section 11. UH-60 FBW Flight Control Design Case Study using CONDUIT®:Flight Test Comparison of Alternate Strategies for Multi-Loop Control Law Optimization
o Description of explicit model follow control system and design
o Flight test validation of analysis model
o Inner-Loop and Outer Loop Design Margin Optimization and flight test results
· Section 12. Optimization and Piloted Simulation Evaluation of Full-Flight Envelope Longitudinal Control Laws for a Business Jet
o Aircraft Model, Control Laws, Specifications
o Optimization Strategy and Results, Handling-Qualities Evaluation
· Section 13.Alternative Design Methods and Results for XV-15 Test Case using CONDUIT®
o Liner-quadratic design method
o Explicit model-following design method
o Dynamic inversion design method
o H∞mixed-sensitivity design method
o Design comparisons
· Section 14. CONDUIT® Case Studies of UAV based on legacy rotorcraft, and eCTOL and eVTOL applications to surveillance, AAM, package delivery
o Fixed wing case studies: design specifications, flight test validation, flight test results and comparison with legacy controller, design specification guidance.
o Rotorcraft case studies: Full scale and small multi-copter configurations, design specifications, piloted simulation studies, flight test validation, flight test results and comparison with legacy controller, design specification guidance.
· Section 15. Research Directions and Upcoming CONDUIT® release features
o Ongoing and Future Flight Control Research
o CONDUIT®Upcoming Release Key Features
INSTRUCTORS
Dr. Mark B. Tischler heads “Tischler Aeronautics,” with a focus on providing Engineering Support in Rotorcraft and Aircraft Flight Dynamics and Control. He retired in January 2021 as an Army Senior Technologist (ST) with the US Army Technology Development Directorate – Moffett Field, CA. His over 40-year career includes experience in aerospace industry and government. For 25 years, he led the US Army Flight Control Technology group that conducts handling qualities, flight dynamics and control research on a wide range of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft and unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Dr. Tischler headed the development of widely used tools for dynamics and control analysis and has been involved in numerous flight-test projects. He has published extensively in this field and is the author of Aircraft and Rotorcraft System Identification: Engineering Methods With Flight Test Examples, 2nd Edition (AIAA 2012),Practical Methods for Aircraft and Rotorcraft Flight Control Design: An Optimization-Based Approach (AIAA 2017), and Advances in Aircraft Flight Control (Ed) (AIAA and Taylor & Francis, 1996). Dr. Tischler has received many major awards for his work over the years. He has the rare distinction of twice receiving the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Senior Professional (2009, 2018), the highest recognition presented to public officials. Dr. Tischler received the Department of the Army Distinguished Civilian Service Medal in 2021, the highest award that may be bestowed by the Secretary of the Army for extraordinary contributions as a Senior Research Scientist.
Dr. Tom Berger is an Associate Tech Fellow at Bell Flight where he supports
control law development for the MV-75 Future Long Range Assault Aircraft. Prior to his role at Bell, Tom spent 20 years
working at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation &
Missile Center where for the last five years, he led the Flight Control Group
and managed U.S. Army research on aircraft and rotorcraft system
identification, flight control, and handling qualities. He is an
author/coauthor on numerous technical papers as well as coauthor of Practical
Methods for Aircraft and Rotorcraft Flight Control Design: An Optimization
Based Approach (AIAA, 2017). Tom
received his BS in Aerospace Engineering from UCLA, his MS in Aeronautics and
Astronautics from Stanford University, and his PhD in Aerospace Engineering
from the Pennsylvania State University.
Classroom hours / CEUs: 20 classroom hours / 2.0 CEU/PDH
Course Delivery and Materials
The classes will be held via Zoom meetings.
- Course Materials: All classes will be recorded and available for replay; class recordings will be available 1-2 business days after the live lecture occurs. Course notes and student software for hands-on exercises will be available for individual download.
- CONDUIT® Software: A 2-month Professional version of the CONDUIT® software will be provided for use. To receive the CONDUIT® software, students should register no later than 26 October with their institutional email address (e.g., company, research lab, academic) and not a personal email to ensure enough time for validation and installation. The software administrator will only distribute the CONDUIT® software to students' institutional email addresses for the students to install and validate. Please note that access to the software is at the discretion of the software distributor.
- eBook: All registrants will receive an eBook copy of the instructors’ AIAA textbook Practical Methods for Aircraft and Rotorcraft Flight Control Design: An Optimization Based Approach (Tischler et al., AIAA, 2017).
- No part of these materials may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, unless for course participants. All rights reserved.
Cancellation Policy: A refund less a $50.00 cancellation fee will be assessed for all cancellations made in writing prior to 7 days before the start of the event. After that time, no refunds will be provided.
Contact: Please contact Lisa Le or Customer Service if you have questions about the course or group discounts (for 5+ participants).