The unique shape of tailless and blended wing body not only gives the flying wing aircraft superior aerodynamic and stealth performance, but also brings great challenges to the control system design due to the compromise of handling and stability characteristics. Compared to the conventional configuration, the shorter fuselage of the flying wing configuration results in shorter control arms, weaker stability, and stronger nonlinear aerodynamic characteristics. In addition, as the longitudinal attitude and velocity are strongly coupled, there is a significant interference on speed control when the trajectory and attitude changes, which makes the coordinated control of longitudinal attitude and velocity a key point for flying wing aircrafts. Therefore, a longitudinal attitude/velocity coordinated control method based on incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) is proposed in this article. Firstly, the expected attitude and airspeed are calculated based on the desired flight trim conditions, and a speed control method based on INDI theory is presented. Secondly, according to the dynamic constraints, the attitude control law based on the INDI method is designed. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, a longitudinal simulation system based on a flying wing aircraft is established in this paper, and followed by the real-world flight tests through the aircraft prototype. From the results of simulation and flight test, the proposed method can achieve great control effects and adaptability to the nonlinear characteristics of the aircraft under different flight conditions. It is important for the method to satisfy the requirements of different flight stages such as cruise, climb and glide, which show superior application prospects of the proposed method.
Research on Longitudinal Attitude and Velocity Coordinated Control Method for a Low Aspect Ratio Flying Wing Aircraft
Lect. Notes Electrical Eng.
Asia-Pacific International Symposium on Aerospace Technology ; 2023 ; Lingshui, China October 16, 2023 - October 18, 2023
2023 Asia-Pacific International Symposium on Aerospace Technology (APISAT 2023) Proceedings ; Chapter : 17 ; 225-238
2024-07-05
14 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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