Modal Matching for LPV Model Reduction of Aeroservoelastic Vehicles

A model order reduction method is proposed for models of aeroservoelastic vehicles in the linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems framework, based on state space interpolation of modal forms. The dynamic order of such models is usually too large for control synthesis and implementation since they combine rigid body dynamics, structural dynamics and unsteady aerodynamics. Thus, model order reduction is necessary. For linear timeinvariant (LTI) models, order reduction is often based on balanced realizations. For LPV models, this requires the solution of a large set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), leading to numerical issues and high computational cost. The proposed approach is to use well developed and numerically stable LTI techniques for reducing the LPV model locally and then to transform the resulting collection of systems into a consistent modal representation suitable for interpolation. The method is demonstrated on an LPV model of the body freedom flutter vehicle, reducing the number of states from 148 to 15. The accuracy of the reduced order model (ROM) is confirmed by evaluating the ν-gap metric with respect to the full order model and by comparison to another ROM obtained by state-of-the-art LPV balanced truncation techniques.