Advanced static soaring flight controls for input constrained aircraft

Abstract

Control surface actuator nonlinearities are recognized as a source of significant problems in flight control system design and verification. Recently developed adaptive control design methodologies with anti-windup augmentation schemes display the potential to recover the linear performance of systems subject to input magnitude constraints with minimal deviation from the corresponding unconstrained system performance despite the presence of unknown parameters. These methodologies are promising for use in static soaring flight control applications where the external thermal effects form the driving force for the aircraft subject to actuator nonlinearities. We investigate extended adaptive control schemes for systems subject to a variety of input constraints based on the longitudinal dynamics of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in advanced static soaring flight. We present simulation results comparing constrained flight scenarios to flight maneuvers with no actuator nonlinearities, and evaluate the performance of these adaptive control schemes. Copyright © 2010 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.