Prof. Pierluigi Capone

Work at ZHAW

Position

• Head Flight Mechanics and Flight Control Systems
• Professional development course - Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)
• SoE Coordinator for drones and unmanned aerial vehicles

Focus

• Design, specification and development from limited control authority to full fly-by-wire flight control systems for fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft
• Parameter Estimation for research, development and training purposes
• Development of Real-time simulatiors (simulation model, control loading, motion base and visual system)
• Flight Test for Flight Control System and Parameter Estimation, Planning, Instrumentation, Execution, data Analysis
• Development of new inceptor designs suitable for tiltrotor and compound helicopter designs.

Teaching

• Aircraft Systems - Control Systems
• Flight Mechanics and Simulation
• System Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Safety
• Safety Critical Systems (MSE)

Experience

• Head of Control Laws Design - Fly by Wire Integrated Team
  AgustaWestland
  2008 - 2013
• Chief Project Engineer for Fly by Wire
  Sistemi Dinamici, Italy, on behalf of AgustaWestland
  2006 - 2008
• Middle Management, Flight Control System Group – Rotorcraft Flight Control System Design, Integration and Flight Testing
  AgustaWestland, Italy
  2004 - 2006
• Engineer Specialist, Active Control Technology Group - Design, verification, clearance, pilot in the loop simulation and flight test of digital control laws.
  Bombardier Aerospace, Canada
  2001 - 2004
• Senior Engineer, Flight Controls and Handling Qualities Groups – BA609 Tilt-Rotor Flight Control System Development
  Bell Helicopter, USA (on Behalf of Agusta SpA)
  2000 - 2001
• Guidance, Navigation & Control Engineer, Flight Control System Group - Responsible for M346 Advanced Trainer Control Laws
  Aermacchi SpA
  1995 - 2000
• Engineer Aerodynamics Office - Perfromenace, Flight Test and Certification
  Pilatus Aircraft Ltd
  1995 - 1995

Education and Continuing education

Education

• CAS University Didactic
  PHZH
  2022 - 2023
• EASA Design Organisation Approval, Certification of aircraft and related products, parts and appliances, and of design and production organisations
  JAA Training Organization
  2021 - 2021
• Development Courses - Middle Management
  AgustaWestland
  2004 - 2012
• Leadership Development
  Bombardier Aerospace
  2004 - 2004
• Aircraft Reliability and FAR/JAR Design Requirements
  Bombardier Aerospace
  2003 - 2003
• MSc In Aerospace Engineering / Aeroservoelasticity
  Politecnico di Milano
  1988 - 1994

Continuing Education

Private Pilot Licence
Avilu flight School
1992

Network

Membership of networks

• ERF (European Rotorcraft Forum) International Committee
• Working Group: WG-112 / Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL)
• Alumni Politecnico di Milano
• Vertical Flight Society
• Swiss Association of Aeronautical Sciences

ORCID digital identifier

ORCID ID: 0009-0006-5395-5670

Social media

Linkedin

Projects

• Feasibility study on novel tilt-wing control allocation strategy / Co-project leader / ongoing
• Flight mechanics of a tilt-wing aircraft under harsh conditions / Deputy project leader / ongoing
• White-box Helicopter System Identification / Project leader / ongoing
• Swiss Drone Base Camp Lodrino / Team member / completed
• Simulation tool to predict the aerodynamics of tilt-wing aircraft / Deputy project leader / completed
• Digital Transformation – Case Studies for Aviation Safety Standards – Modelling and Simulation / Project leader / completed
• High Operational Reliability for Unmanned Systems / Project leader / completed
• Concept and Feasibility Study of a Power Reserve Calculator for General Aviation / Team member / completed
• Novel Generic Collision Avoidance Algorithm / Project leader / completed

Publications

Articles in scientific journal, peer-reviewed

• Liu, X., Abà, A., Capone, P., Manfriani, L., & Fu, Y. (2022). Atmospheric disturbance modelling for a piloted flight simulation study of airplane safety envelope over complex terrain. Aerospace, 9(2), 103. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9020103
• Abà, A., Barra, F., Capone, P., & Guglieri, G. (2020). Mathematical modelling of gimballed tilt-rotors for real-time flight simulation. Aerospace, 7(9), 124. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace7090124
• Monstein, R., Capone, P., & Dettling, M. (2019). Determination of model structure from flight test with generalized additive models. Journal of Aircraft. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.C035171

Books, peer-reviewed

Moorhouse, D. J., de Boer, W., Fielding, C., Hahn, K.-U., Hofinger, G., Magni, J.-F., Verde, L., Amato, F., Attar, M., Black, T., Barfield, F., Cord, T., Capone, P., Dinkelmann, M., Duda, H., Gibson, J., Iervolino, R., Jategaonkar, J., Moormann, D., et al. (2000). Flight control design : best practices. Research and Technology Organization, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a387777.pdf

Written conference contributions, peer-reviewed

• Pedrioli, A., Capone, P., Righi, M., Garcia-Sanchez, E., Pinsard, L., & Vieira Gomes, J. (2024, January 10). MODEL-SI : modeling and simulation - multi-fidelity surrogate model of an eVTOL for certification. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Science and Technology Forum and Exposition (AIAA SciTech Forum), Orlando, USA, 8-12 January 2024. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2024-1624
• Primatesta, S., Barra, F., Godio, S., Guglieri, G., & Capone, P. (2023). Implementation of a comprehensive real-time flight simulator for XV-15 tilt-rotor aircraft. AIAA SciTech 2023 Forum. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2023-0336
• Abà, A., Pedrioli, A., Monstein, R., Hitz, M., Schneider, R., & Capone, P. (2023, September 1). Convertiplane control during transition : the Collective and Throttle Lever (CATL). 49th European Rotorcraft Forum 2023 - Proceedings.
• Pavel, M., Abà, A., & Capone, P. (2023, September 1). Metrics and guidelines for rotorcraft modeling accuracy and their relation to model uncertainty : a state-of-the practice survey. 49th European Rotorcraft Forum 2023 - Proceedings.
• Garbo, P., Quaranta, G., & Capone, P. (2023, June 12). Non-invasive optical sensors to measure pilots’ forces on aircraft control inceptors. AIAA AVIATION 2023 Forum. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2023-3321
• Figuet, B., Leibundgut, P., Pedrioli, A., Frauenfelder, A., Doran, H. D., & Capone, P. (2022, September 7). HORUS : High Operational Reliability for Unmanned Systems. 48th European Rotorcraft Forum (ERF), Winterthur, Switzerland, 6-9 September 2022. https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-27218
• Capone, P., Primatesta, S., Barra, F., & Guglieri, G. (2022, May 10). Design and integration of a tilt-rotor flight simulation platform. Forum 78 Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.4050/F-0078-2022-17587
• Capone, P., Rinaldi, M., & Guglieri, G. (2022, May 10). Comprehensive analysis and configuration of a control loading solution for a rotary wing flight simulator. Forum 78 Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.4050/F-0078-2022-17573
• Barra, F., Capone, P., & Guglieri, G. (2020). A methodology for preliminary performance estimation of a hybrid-electric tilt-wing aircraft for emergency medical services [Conference paper]. 2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 1636–1643. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUAS48674.2020.9214025
• Doran, H. D., Reif, M. U., Oehler, M., Stöhr, C., & Capone, P. (2020). Conceptual design of human-drone communication in collaborative environments [Conference paper]. 2020 50th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-W), 118–121. https://doi.org/10.1109/DSN-W50199.2020.00030
• Barra, F., Capone, P., Monstein, R., Godio, S., & Guglieri, G. (2019, September 17). Implementation of a comprehensive mathematical model for tilt-rotor real-time flight simulation. 45th European Rotorcraft Forum, Warsaw, Poland, 17-20 September 2019. https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-19753
• Capone, P. (2002). Linearization of aircraft models : a flight control system and flying qualities perspective. Challenges in Dynamics, System Identification, Control and Handling Qualities for Land, Air Sea and Space Vehicles.
• Capone, P., & Mantegazza, P. (1995). Adaptive control of a multi-input multi-output flutter suppression system. Nineteenth European Rotorcraft Forum : Cernobbio (Como), September 14-16, 1993.

Other publications

Deverlija, J. J., Abà, A., Capone, P., Masi, A., Daniele, M., & Scorcelletti, F. (2024, September 10). A novel wake interference model for helicopter real-time simulation. 50th European Rotorcraft Forum, Marseille, France, 10-12 September 2024. https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-32606

go back