Advanced Flight Dynamics with Elements of Flight Control

Advanced Flight Dynamics aim to integrate the subjects of aircraft performance, trim and stability/control in a seamless manner. Advanced Flight Dynamics highlights three key and unique viewpoints. Firstly, it follows the revised and corrected aerodynamic modeling presented previously in recent textbook on Elementary Flight Dynamics. Secondly, it uses bifurcation and continuation theory, especially the Extended Bifurcation Analysis (EBA) procedure devised by the authors, to blend the subjects of aircraft performance, trim and stability, and flight control into a unified whole. Thirdly, rather than select one control design tool or another, it uses the generalized Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (NDI) methodology to illustrate the fundamental principles of flight control.

Advanced Flight Dynamics covers all the standard airplane maneuvers, various types of instabilities normally encountered in flight dynamics and illustrates them with real-life airplane data and examples, thus bridging the gap between the teaching of flight dynamics/ control theory in the university and its practice in airplane design bureaus.

The expected reader group for this book would ideally be senior undergraduate and graduate students, practicing aerospace/flight simulation engineers/scientists from industry as well as researchers in various organizations.

Key Features:

• Focus on unified nonlinear approach, with nonlinear analysis tools.
• Provides an up-to-date, corrected, and unified presentation of aircraft trim, stability and control analysis including nonlinear phenomena and closed-loop stability analysis.
• Contains a computational tool and real-life example carried through the chapters.
• Includes complementary nonlinear dynamic inversion control approach, with relevant aircraft examples.
• Fills the gap in the market for a text including non-linear flight dynamics and continuation methods.

Dr. Nandan K Sinha is on the faculty of Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, India, where he is currently a professor since July 2014. Dr. Sinha has Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD degrees in Aerospace Engineering all from IITs and postdoctoral stint during 2003-2006 at the TU-Darmstadt, Germany, before taking up the faculty position at IIT Madras in 2006. Dr. Sinha has over a decade experience of teaching courses in vibrations, flight mechanics & controls, aircraft design, space technology, nonlinear dynamics, etc. His research interests evolve around design, dynamics, control and guidance of aerospace vehicles, working on several funded projects from Indian aerospace industry. He is known for his popular video lecture series on Flight Dynamics available on youtube and web-based lecture series on Introduction to Space Technology, both via NPTEL resources, an initiative of MHRD, Govt of India. He has authored the book "Elementary Flight Dynamics with an Introduction to Bifurcation and Continuation Methods," with Dr. N Ananthkrishnan published by CRC press, Taylor and Francis in 2014. His professional services as subject expert extend to many national committees for various assignments and as reviewers to many international/national journals and conferences.

Dr N Ananthkrishnan is an Independent Consultant presently based out of Mumbai (India) with over twenty-two years experience in academia and industry in multi-disciplinary research and development across a wide spectrum from Combustion Systems to Airplane Aerodynamics to Flight Control & Guidance. Over the past decade, he has largely worked with businesses in the Mumbai/Pune area and Bangalore in India, and in Daejeon (South Korea), and with a few select academic institutes. His recent work has focused on the broad area of Aerospace Systems Design & Integration with emphasis on Atmospheric Flight Mechanics & Control and Air-breathing Propulsion Systems. He has previously served on the faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Bombay at Mumbai (India) and as a Visiting Faculty Member at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, CA (USA). He received the “Excellence in Teaching” award at IIT Bombay in the year 2000. He has authored a textbook (with NK Sinha), Elementary Flight Dynamics with an Introduction to Bifurcation and Continuation Methods, published by CRC Press, Taylor & Francis (2014). He received his education in Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institutes of Technology majoring in Flight Mechanics & Control, Aerodynamics, Aircraft Design, and Nonlinear Systems. He is Associate Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) and has served a term as a member of the AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Technical Committee.