Bijan Barzgaran

About Me

I’m a PhD candidate studying aircraft control with Mehran Mesbahi. In 2014, I graduated from the Technical University of Berlin with a degree in aerospace engineering. I joined Mehran’s group in winter of 2015.

Education

PhD Candidate in Aeronautics and Astronautics (current)
MSc. Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Washington, Seattle (2016)
BSc. Aerospace Engineering, Technical University of Berlin (2014)

Active Research

My primary research focus is on modern control of commercial aircraft. Currently, commercial aircraft control is accomplished by designing linear control schemes around specific trim conditions and switching between these schemes using gain-scheduling. This involves a lot of design effort for the separate controllers and extensive validation of the whole gain-scheduled system through Monte-Carlo simulation. Modern control techniques could help reduce the overall effort in aircraft control design. Strict certification requirements has so far prevented the use of such modern techniques. My PhD work is centered around analyzing the modern control technique of Model Predictive Control (MPC) in such a way that it is possible to apply MPC in commercial aircraft control.

This work is part of the Boeing Controls Collaboration, a project initiated between the Boeing Company and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the University of Washington. Other thrusts of the project focus on Nonlinear Control methods and designing high fidelity aircraft models for validation.

Other research interests of mine include distributed optimization, graph and network theory and spacecraft controls.

Research Projects

Model for Aeroelastic Response to Gust Excitation (MARGE):
Collaborative effort at the 3ft x 3ft wind tunnel owned by the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at the University of Washington, supported by the Boeing Company. Design, development, building, testing, and experimentation of a wind tunnel test article, an actively controlled longitudinal aircraft model. Active, optimal control methods (LQR) with real-time optimization and constraints (MPC) were tested during the experimentation phase for their disturbance rejection. Disturbances were created by control surfaces or by a custom designed gust generation system.
HuskySat:
Participation in cross-discipline cubesat project. Initial design and coding of a satellite GNC software.
AeroStruct:
Development and implementation of an aerodynamic model for a forward swept commercial aircraft within Datcom.

Publications

Papers

U. Lee, T. P. Reynolds, B. Barzgaran, M. Hudoba de Badyn, J. Chrisope, A. Adler, K. Kaycee, M. Mesbahi. Development of Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem for 3U CubeSat with Electric Propulsion. AIAA SPACE 2017.
J. Quenzer, B. Barzgaran, K. Morgansen, M. Mesbahi. The Generic Wide Body Aircraft Model. AIAA Guidance Navigation and Control Conference, January 2018.
J. Quenzer, B. Barzgaran, K. Morgansen, M. Mesbahi. Quadratic Stability Margin in Switched Control System Design. American Control Conference 2018.
J. Quenzer, B. Barzgaran, A. Zongolowicz, K. A. Hinson, M. Mesbahi, K. Morgansen, E. Livne. Model for aeroelastic response to gust excitation. AIAA Scitech Forum, 2019.
B. Barzgaran, J. Quenzer, A. Zongolowicz, K. A. Hinson, M. Mesbahi, K. Morgansen, E. Livne. Low-cost wind tunnel studies of gust alleviation control techniques. International Forum on Aeroelasticity and Structural Dynamics, 2019.
B. Barzgaran, M. Mesbahi. Robust Analysis and Sensitivity Design of Model Predictive Control. IFAC World Congress, 2020.
B. Barzgaran, J. Quenzer, M. Mesbahi, K. Morgansen, E. Livne. Real-time Model Predictive Control for Gust Load Alleviation on an Aeroelastic Wind Tunnel Test Article. Accepted for publication in AIAA Scitech Forum, 2021.

Undergraduate Theses

B. Barzgaran. Development and Validation of a 3-D Flutteranalysis for the FE-Software Abaqus. (May 1, 2014)

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