| The time-based simulation is an important tool for the engineer. Often a time-domain simulation is the most expedient to construct, the most capable of handling complex modeling issues, or the most understandable with an engineer's physical intuition. Aeroelastic systems, for example, are often most easily solved with a nonlinear time-based approach to allow the use of high fidelity models. Simulations of automatic flight control systems can also be easier to model in the time domain, especially when nonlinearities are present.; Collocation is an optimization method for systems that incorporate a time-domain simulation. Instead of integrating the equations of motion for each design iteration, the optimizer iteratively solves the simulation as it finds the optimal design. This forms a smooth, well-posed, sparse optimization problem, transforming the numerical integration's sequential calculation into a set of constraints that can be evaluated in any order, or even in parallel. The collocation method used in this thesis has been improved from existing techniques in several ways, in particular with a very simple and computationally inexpensive method of applying dynamic constraints, such as damping, that are more traditionally calculated with linear models in the frequency domain.; This thesis applies the collocation method to a range of aircraft design problems, from minimizing the weight of a wing with a flutter constraint, to gain-scheduling the stability augmentation system of a small-scale flight control testbed, to aeroservoelastic design of a large aircraft concept. Collocation methods have not been applied to aeroelastic simulations in the past, although the combination of nonlinear aerodynamic analyses with structural dynamics and stability constraints is well-suited to collocation. The results prove the collocation method's worth as a tool for aircraft design, particularly when applied to the multidisciplinary numerical models used today. |
