Benchmarking ceasiom software to predict flight control and flying qualities of the B-747

CEASIOM, the Computerized Environment for Aircraft Synthesis and Integrated Optimization Methods, is a framework that integrates discipline-specific tools for conceptual design. At this early stage of the design it is very useful to be able to predict the flying and handling qualities of the aircraft. In order to do this for the configuration being studied, the aerodynamic database needs to be computed and coupled to the stability and control tools to carry out the analysis. This paper describes how the adaptive-fidelity Computational Fluid-Dynamics module of CEASIOM computes the aerodynamic database of an aircraft configuration, and how that data is analyzed by the Flight Control System Designer Toolkit module to determine the flying qualities and the control laws of the aircraft. The paper compares the predicted flying qualities with the flight-test data of the Boeing B747 aircraft in order to verify the goodness of the overall approach.