Subspace identification of an aircraft linear parameter-varying flutter model

The process of system identification of an linear parameter-varying (LPV) system using subspace techniques is demonstrated by application to the widely used pitch-plunge model of an aircraft flutter simulation. The identification is done using a recently published subspace identification (SID) algorithm [1] for LPV systems. The objective is to demonstrate the ability of this method to not only identify a highly accurate model in state space form, but to also determine the state order of the system. As the identification data are gained from simulation, a comparison is given between the noiseless and the noisy case, and the effects of noise especially on the model order estimation are discussed.