Active Control of Aerial Refueling Hose-Drogue Systems

Abstract

Dynamic analysis and control system design for aerial refueling hose-drogue systems during a receiver-probe coupling phase are studied. When a receiver plane approaches to couple with a refueling drogue, the hose-drogue system undergoes transient motion due to the receiver fore-body aerodynamic effect in addition to the tanker motion and downwash, and atmospheric turbulence. At the moment of contact with the drogue, the drag force on the drogue drops resulting in erratic motion of the refueling hose due to loss of tension. Unless carefully regulated, this may lead to critical damages to the refueling assembly and the receiver probe. In this paper, a hose-drogue dynamic model previously developed by the authors is extended to study 1) the receiver fore-body aerodynamic effect on the drogue transient motion prior to coupling, 2) the wave motion of the drogue-hose system due to the tension change in the hose, and 3) some possible active control strategies for the hose-drogue system during the pre-and the post-contact with the receiver probe.

Dynamic modeling and vibration control of a flexible aerial refueling hose

“…As the number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increases in modern military missions, autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) has gained substantial attention, and significant research is carried out and in process for the detection, control and guidance of the tanker and the receiver [1][2][3][4][5]. A hose-drogue aerial refueling system consists of a flexible hose-drogue on a tanker and a probe on a receiver, which is the most universal refueling equipment because of its various advantages such as simple and cheap tanker, multipoint hose-drogue, and no boom operator.…”

Active Control of Aerial Refueling Hose-Drogue Dynamics with the Improved Reel Take-Up System

“…However, its deficiency is also apparent. The motion of the drogue is sensitive to atmospheric turbulence, tanker wake, and the receiver bow wave [13][14][15]. NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) had only achieved success in two of the six docking flight tests in the UAV Autonomous Aerial Refueling Verification Program [7].…”

“…Ribbens et al [19] established a new dynamic model of the hose-drogue system and modeled a gain with a first-order lag controller for suppressing the HWP, but only the two-dimensional case was analyzed. Ro et al [14,15] designed and simulated some conceptual active control strategies for the hose-drogue system during the pre-and the post-hookup. Vassberg et al [17,[20][21][22] studied the modeling for the hose-drogue system and simulated the spring-loaded take-up system work with various conditions based on the KC-10 tanker.…”

“…Wang et al [23] proposed and simulated a new active control strategy based on the backstepping method for the HWP. Though the control strategy based on permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) requires more sensors and the control system is more complex [14], the PMSM driver has been widely accepted. To solve the spillover effects caused by truncated models, Liu et al [8] established flexible hose partial differential equations (PDEs) and proposed a boundary control scheme based on the hose's vibration.…”

On-board visual navigation system for unmanned aerial vehicles autonomous aerial refueling

“…NASA performed docking using F/A-18 receiver airplane and Omega tank airplane. 18 Dynamic analysis and active control design for aerial refueling probe and drogue systems were studied in Ro's work, 19 where they carried out a conceptual design of an actively stabilized drogue refueling system (ASDRS) at a reference flight condition. Our previous works focused on the research on the rigid boom method and have already built a flying simulation platform.…”