Dr. Kioumars Najmabadi
Technical Fellow, Boeing

We are very pleased to announce the establishment of a new research collaboration between our department and The Boeing Company in the area of high-performance fly-by-wire flight control technology.

Flight control involves a wide array of issues surrounding the design and implementation of control laws for aircraft longitudinal and lateral dynamics during distinct flight envelops. As Boeing moves towards the development of highly efficient airplanes, flight controls have been pushed towards more optimized control system architectures and designs. This push in turn has direct implications for the product development design cycle and comprehensive system-wide optimization and integration.

Facilitated by advances in optimization-based techniques for control system design and the availability of analysis and synthesis approaches for nonlinear control, the UW research team has proposed the initiation of a long term relationship between the controls group at the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Flight Controls group at Boeing. The project is led by Professors Mehran Mesbahi and Kristi Morgansen at UW, and Dr. Kioumars Najmabadi at Boeing.

The establishment of this collaboration would not be possible without the vision and continuous support of Todd Zarfos, Vice President of Engineering for Washington Design Center, and Kourosh Hadi, Director of Airplane Product Development, at Boeing.