Identification of Nonlinear Aeroelastic Systems

The successful identification of nonlinear systems could find uses in many aerospace applications
including the validation of finite element models and tracking the stability of aircraft during flight
flutter testing. The effectiveness of existing nonlinear system identification techniques is limited by
various factors such as the complexity of the system under investigation and the type of nonlinearities
present. In this work, a new approach is introduced that is able to identify multi degree-of-freedom
systems featuring any type of nonlinear function, including discontinuous functions. The method is
shown to yield accurate identifications of three different simulated aeroelastic systems containing a
wide range of structural nonlinearities.