Roll Control of Morphing Aircraft with Synthetic Jet Actuators at a High Angle of Attack

Abstract

Flow separation and dynamic stall occurring at a high angle of attack will lead to difficulty in control and maneuverability for morphing aircraft. This study proposes a novel active flow control technology using a synthetic jet actuator for the roll motion of morphing aircraft. With the help of the computational fluid dynamics method and vortex lattice method, the roll control model of morphing aircraft undergoing large shape change at a high angle of attack is established. In this model, both the array of the actuator with an optimized cavity shape and morphing span, which are subject to the input saturation constraint, are used to mimic the conventional control surface. Integrated flight control based on the sliding mode control method is designed to ensure the desired closed-loop asymptotic stability, wherein the radial basis function neural network is employed to provide the compensation induced by the input saturation constraint. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the control scheme, various control strategies for different combinations of input are proposed to maintain the roll motion. The numerical results show that the designed control law could track the target signal well, which suggests that the virtual control surface is an effective tool for maintaining the high flight performance of morphing aircraft.

Autonomous Shape Decision Making of Morphing Aircraft with Improved Reinforcement Learning

“…Among them, the research into morphing control mostly focuses on the morphing airfoil structures, flight dynamics and intelligent materials [6][7][8][9]. The research into flight control assumes that the aircraft shape changes according to the preset change strategy [10][11][12][13]. Obviously, the assumption that the shape changes passively does not meet people's pursuit of the "intelligent and adaptive" property of MA.…”

Rotor Failure Compensation in a Biplane Quadrotor Based on Virtual Deflection

“…Active flow separation control using SJA installed near the location of the maximum thickness of the airfoil is proposed and implemented for the stall control of the NACA 0012 airfoil in a wind tunnel test [56], and the outcome shows 11% improvement in lift coefficient and 4 • stall angle increase. Li et al proposed a novel AFC technology using an SJA for roll motion of morphing aircraft at high AoA [57]. Tang et al [58] studied the effectiveness of the SJA arrays that are placed at 23 % and 43 % of the chord from the leading edge of a low-speed wing mode (used in small UAVs) and observed the delay and generate the high-momentum flow near the outer region.…”