This book summarizes the main achievements of the EC funded 6th Framework Program project COFCLUO – Clearance of Flight Control Laws Using Optimization. This project successfully contributed to the achievement of a top-level objective to meet society’s needs for a more efficient, safer and environmentally friendly air transport by providing new techniques and tools for the clearance of flight control laws. This is an important part of the certification and qualification process of an aircraft – a costly and time-consuming process for the aeronautical industry. The overall objective of the COFCLUO project was to develop and apply optimization techniques to the clearance of flight control laws in order to improve efficiency and reliability. In the book, the new techniques are explained and benchmarked against traditional techniques currently used by the industry. The new techniques build on mathematical criteria derived from the certification and qualification requirements together with suitable models of the aircraft. The development of these criteria and models are also presented in the book. Because of wider applicability, the optimization-based clearance of flight control laws will open up the possibility to design innovative aircraft that today are out of the scope using classical clearance tools. Optimization-based clearance will not only increase safety but it will also simplify the whole certification and qualification process, thus significantly reduce cost. The achieved speedup will also support rapid modeling and prototyping and reduce “time to market”.

This is the first book to focus on the use of nonlinear analysis and synthesis techniques for aircraft control. It is also the first book to address in detail closed-loop control problems for aircraft "on-ground" – i.e. speed and directional control of aircraft before take-off and after touch down. The book will be of interest to engineers, researchers, and students in control engineering, and especially aircraft control.

In this book recent results of the GARTEUR (Group for Aeronautical Research and Technology in Europe) Action Group FM (AG11) are presented. The book focuses on analysis techniques for the flight clearance of highly augmented aircrafts, including contributions of 20 European aeronautical organisations such as National Research Centers, Aerospace Industries and Universities. The tasks and requirements of the Industrial Clearance Process for Flight Control Laws are presented as well as classical and particularly new analysis methods. The different methods are evaluated and compared and their potential application to Civil Aircraft is demonstrated.