Modeling and Control of an Aeroelastic Morphing Vehicle

TLDR

Morphing aircraft are multirole platforms that adapt their external shape to changing missions, with dynamics governed by time‑varying aerodynamic forces linked to wing shape changes, modeled as a variable‑geometry rigid body with quasi‑steady aeroelastic corrections. The study formulates a multiloop controller for an aeroelastic morphing UAV to achieve proven structural integrity and self‑scheduled performance. The controller employs inner‑loop classical gains for stability and a linear‑parameter‑varying outer loop for robust stability and performance, with reduced‑order synthesis via robust control reduction and evaluated through maneuvers covering large shape changes. The multiloop approach enables in‑flight transformation between vehicle states in under one minute while preserving overall stability and control.

Abstract

Morphing aircraft are conceived as multirole platforms that modify their external shape substantially to adapt to a changing mission environment The dynamic response of the unmanned aerial vehicle will be governed by the time-varying aerodynamic forces and moments which will be a function of the wing's shape changes by the morphing command. Here, it is assumed that the morphing unmanned aerial vehicle behaves as a variable geometry rigid body, but with dynamic coefficients corrected to include quasi-steady aeroelastic effects. A multiloop controller for the aeroelastic morphing unmanned aerial vehicle concept is formulated to provide both proven structural and self-scheduled characteristics. The proposed controller uses a set of inner-loop gains to provide stability using classical techniques, whereas a linear parameter-varying outer-loop controller is devised to guarantee a specific level of robust stability and performance for the time-varying dynamics. Reduced-order controllers are synthesized using a robust control reduction technique. A series of maneuvers are devised to exhaustively evaluate the performance of the synthesized multiloop controller subject to large-scale geometrical shape changes. The underlying multiloop approach successfully enables in-flight transformation between vehicle states in less than one minute, while maintaining the overall vehicle stability and control.