Dmitry Ignatyev

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer in Flight Dynamics and Control at Cranfield University

High aspect ratio flexible wings are of increasing interest for enhancing the aerodynamic efficiency of future designs. However, they often exhibit nonlinear dynamic behavior, complicating both testing and analysis. This paper presents a novel framework aimed at identifying the sources of such nonlinearities, focusing on a wing that previously disp...

Predicting flutter remains a key challenge in aeroelastic research, with certain models relying on modal parameters, such as natural frequencies and damping ratios. These models are particularly useful in early design stages or for the development of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (maximum takeoff mass below 7 kg). This study evaluates two frequenc...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with fully electric propulsion systems mainly use lithium-based batteries. However, using fuel cells, hybrid propulsion systems are created to improve the flight time and payload capacity of the UAVs. Energy management and energy-aware path planning are important aspects to be explored in hybrid-propulsion powered UA...

Predicting flutter remains a key challenge in aeroelastic research, with certain models relying on modal parameters, such as natural frequencies and damping ratios. These models are particularly useful in early design stages or for the development of small UAVs (maximum take-off mass below 7 kg). This study evaluates two frequency-domain system ide...

In general, there is a mismatch between a finite element model of a structure and its real behaviour. In aeronautics, this mismatch must be small because finite element models are a fundamental part of the development of an aircraft and of increasing importance with the trend to more flexible wings in modern designs. Finite element model updating c...

The publication of the previous study, titled “Experimental Study on the Dynamic Behaviour of Drones Designed for Racing Competitions”, highlighted the increasing interest in employing scientific methods for their design and analysis. That study examined the flight data of 15 racing drones within a large flight area, using Doppler-type sensors for...

This research paper introduces an enhanced method for visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), specifically designed for dynamic environments. Our approach distinguishes itself from traditional visual SLAM methods by integrating feature-based techniques with a lightweight object identification network known as You Only Look Once (YOLO)....

In the past decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have garnered significant attention across diverse applications, including surveillance, cargo shipping, and agricultural spraying. Despite their widespread deployment, concerns about maintaining stability and safety, particularly when carrying payloads, persist. The development of such UAV platfo...

Purpose: Ground vibration testing is critical for aircraft design and certification. Fast relaxed vector fitting (FRVF) and Loewner framework (LF), recently extended to modal parameter extraction in mechanical systems to address the computational challenges of time and frequency domain techniques, are applied for damage detection on aeronautically...

The success of NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter underscores the importance of aerobots in Mars exploration, however, its limitations in endurance and payload capacity necessitate optimization of the next-generation rotorcrafts. This paper proposes an approach to enhance Martian rotorcraft within specified parameters, aiming to improve performance and me...

The finite element model updating procedure of large or complex structures is challenging for engineering practitioners and researchers. Iterative methods, such as genetic algorithms and response surface models, have a high computational burden for these problems. This work introduces an enhanced version of the well-known Efficient Global Optimisat...

The Loewner framework has recently been proposed for the system identification of mechanical systems, mitigating the limitations of current frequency domain fitting processes for the extraction of modal parameters. In this work, the Loewner framework computational performance, in terms of the elapsed time till identification, is assessed. This is i...

Appropriate estimation of Region of Attraction for a nonlinear dynamical system plays a key role in system analysis and control design. Sum-of-Squares optimization is a powerful tool enabling Region of Attraction estimation for polynomial dynamical systems. Employment of a positive definite function called shape function within the Sum-of-Squares p...

Data-driven structural health monitoring (SHM) requires precise estimates of the target system behaviour. In this sense, SHM by means of modal parameters is strictly linked to system identification (SI). However, existing frequency-domain SI techniques have several theoretical and practical drawbacks. This paper proposes using an input-output syste...

Future generations of flight control systems, such as those for unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs), are likely to be more adaptive and intelligent to cope with the extra safety and reliability requirements due to pilotless operations. An efficient fault detection and isolation (FDI) system is paramount and should be capable of monitoring the healt...

Indoor position estimation of any moving objects with the aid of integration of multiple sensors such as optical, radio, and ultrasonic is an ongoing field of research. Although, commercial companies like VICON and OptiTrack provides the higher precision indoor positioning by using custom design optical sensors, but not every teaching or research i...

For complex or large structures, the model updating process can be long and tedious and numerical methods can be computationally expensive. Hence, practitioners and researchers often resort to meta-modelling techniques when large problems are met. Even so, traditional methodologies, such as the Efficient Global Optimisation, can be slow and give su...

Sum-of-squares programming is widely used for region of attraction (ROA) estimations of asymptotically stable equilibrium points of nonlinear polynomial systems. However, existing methods yield conservative results, especially for non-symmetric and unbounded regions. In this study, a cost-effective approach for ROA estimation is proposed based on t...

This paper offers the TRAM-FPV Racing open database. It results from indoor flights with five (5) racing drones at Cranfield University (UK). Strictly, at the Flight Arena. It is one of the largest indoor flight fields in the world for research goals. The flight data were recorded using an optical measurement system (OMS). The position and orientat...

One of the major issues to deal with UAV technology is controlling the vehicle dynamics as proposed. Use of drones in multipurpose operations such as cargo delivery, disaster aid, food delivery etc. a controller needed robust against weight change, so the model uncertainties. Linear Controllers have been studied well and implemented successfully. S...

The advancements in the aeronautical industry and research on materials and manufacturing methods in the last 70 years have been shifting the paradigm of wing design to high aspect ratio flexible wings. These wings can show a varying behaviour in different operating conditions, as per the nature of their geometry and materials. This work proposes a...

Las Jornadas de Automática (JA) son el evento más importante del Comité Español de Automática (CEA), entidad científico-técnica con más de cincuenta años de vida y destinada a la difusión e implantación de la Automática en la sociedad. Este año se celebra la cuadragésima tercera edición de las JA, que constituyen el punto de encuentro de la comunida...

Beam-like flexible structures are of interest in many fields of engineering, particularly aeronautics, where wings are frequently modelled and represented as such. Experimental modal analysis is commonly used to characterise the wing’s dynamical response. However, unlike other flexible structure applications, no benchmark problems involving high-as...

A general numerical method using sum of squares programming is proposed to address the problem of estimating the region of attraction (ROA) of an asymptotically stable equilibrium point of a nonlinear polynomial system. The method is based on Lyapunov theory, and a shape function is defined to enlarge the provable subset of a local Lyapunov functio...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-0691.vid Adaptive control has the potential to improve the performance and reliability of aircraft. However, the inherent nonlinearity of adaptive control causes difficulty in stability and robustness verification which is critical before entry into service. In this paper, the region of attrac...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-2032.vid The presence of uncertainties caused by unforeseen malfunctions in the actuation system or changes in aircraft behaviour could lead to aircraft loss of control during flight. The paper proposes almost model-independent control law combining recent developments in nonlinear control the...

Group Design Project (GDP) is a common education strategy in engineering. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, GDP cannot be fulfilled in a typical lab condition. The paper describes an example of delivering intensive hands-on, group project-based engineering course Autonomous Vehicle Dynamics and Control at Cranfield University. The project was...

Increasing levels of autonomy impose more pronounced performance requirements for unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). Presence of model uncertainties significantly reduces a ground vehicle performance when the vehicle is traversing an unknown terrain or the vehicle inertial parameters vary due to a mission schedule or external disturbances. A comprehen...

This paper introduces a numerical method for region of attraction (ROA) estimation of the adaptive control system in polynomial form. A classical adaptive controller with sigma modification on suppressing the wing rock motion is revisited. Using the nonlinear analysis technique based on the sum of squares optimization, ROA of the origin is computed...

Presence of uncertainties caused by unforeseen malfunctions in actuation system or changes in aircraft behaviour could lead to aircraft loss-of-control during flight. The paper presents Two-Layer Adaptive augmentation for Incremental Backstepping (TLA-IBKS) control algorithm designed for a large transport aircraft. IBKS uses angular accelerations a...

Airframe icing causes significant degradation of aerodynamic characteristics and influences the flight safety. Wind tunnel study of longitudinal steady and unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of a transport aircraft in icing conditions is carried out in order to develop mathematical model of aerodynamics in the extended flight envelope. The wind t...

Uncertainties caused by unforeseen malfunctions of the actuator or changes in aircraft behavior could lead to aircraft loss of control during flight. The paper presents a Two-Layer Framework (TLF) augmenting Incremental Backstepping (IBKS) control algorithm designed for an aircraft. IBKS uses angular accelerations and current control deflections to...

Presence of uncertainties caused by unforeseen malfunctions of the actuator or changes in aircraft behavior could lead to aircraft loss of control during flight. The paper presents two-layer parameter estimation procedure augmenting Incremental Backstepping (IBKS) control algorithm designed for a large transport aircraft. IBKS uses angular accelera...

In large variety of practical applications, using information from different sources or different kind of data is a reasonable demand. The problem of studying multiple source data can be represented as a multi-task learning problem, and then the information from one source can help to study the information from the other source by extracting a shar...

Flow over an aircraft at high angles of attack is characterized by a combination of separated and vortical flows that interact with each other and with the airframe. As a result, there is a set of phenomena negatively affecting the aircraft’s performance, stability and control, namely, degradation of lifting force, nonlinear variation of pitching m...

Dynamics of a modern aircraft at high angles of attack is complicated with hazardous phenomena such as wing rock, stall, and spin. The paper presents a technique for cost-effective and safely studying of conventional and critical flight regimes and control validation using an autonomous scaled aircraft model mounted in a three-degree-of-freedom gim...

High-angles-of-attack dynamics of aircraft are complicated with dangerous phenomena such as wing rock, stall, and spin. Autonomous dynamically scaled aircraft model mounted in three-degree-of-freedom (3DoF) dynamic rig is proposed for studying aircraft dynamics and prototyping of control laws in wind tunnel. Dynamics of the scaled aircraft model in...

A neural network approach for modeling of unsteady aerodynamic characteristics in a wide angle-of-attack range is considered in the paper. Special tests have been carried out in TsAGI wind tunnel to investigate dynamic properties of unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of a generic transonic cruiser, which is a canard configuration. The aerodynamic...

Experimental study of unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of a passenger aircraft over an extended angle-of-attack range was carried out using a series of forced-oscillation tests. Strong nonlinear effects, namely, an influence of oscillation frequency on aerodynamic derivatives and hysteresises with multiple self-intersections, were observed. The...

Experimental study of unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of a passenger aircraft over an extended angle-of-attack range was carried out using a series of forced-oscillation tests. Strong nonlinear effects, namely, an influence of oscillation frequency on aerodynamic derivatives and hysteresises with multiple self-intersections, were observed. The...

Adequate modeling of unsteady aerodynamic characteristics is required for investigations of aircraft dynamics and stability analysis at high angles of attack. Recurrent neural networks of NARX type are applied in the paper. The efficiency of the approach is demonstrated with two examples, namely, delta wing and aircraft with canard surface. To impr...

The possibility of the application of neural networks in the simulation of the pitch moment coefficient in a wide range of angles of attack for harmonic oscillations of transonic aircraft is shown. TsAGI carried out an experimental study of transonic aircraft in the project SimSAC of the European 6th Framework Program. Traditional simulation of the...