A new robust fuzzy method for unmanned flying vehicle control

A new general robust fuzzy approach was presented to control the position and the attitude of unmanned flying vehicles(UFVs). Control of these vehicles was challenging due to their nonlinear underactuated behaviors. The proposed control system combined great advantages of generalized indirect adaptive sliding mode control(IASMC) and fuzzy control for the UFVs. An on-line adaptive tuning algorithm based on Lyapunov function and Barbalat lemma was designed, thus the stability of the system can be guaranteed. The chattering phenomenon in the sliding mode control was reduced and the steady error was also alleviated. The numerical results, for an underactuated quadcopter and a high speed underwater vehicle as case studies, indicate that the presented adaptive design of fuzzy sliding mode controller performs robustly in the presence of sensor noise and external disturbances. In addition, online unknown parameter estimation of the UFVs, such as ground effect and planing force especially in the cases with the Gaussian sensor noise with zero mean and standard deviation of 0.5 m and 0.1 rad and external disturbances with amplitude of 0.1 m/s2 and frequency of 0.2 Hz, is one of the advantages of this method. These estimated parameters are then used in the controller to improve the trajectory tracking performance.

Transonic Rudder Buzz on Tailless Flying Wing UAV

Transonic rudder buzz responses based on the computational fluid dynamics or computational structural dynamics(CFD/CSD)loosely method are analyzed for a tailless flying wing unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV).The Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS)equations and finite element methods based on the detailed aerodynamic and structural model are established,in which the aerodynamic dynamic meshes adopt the unstructured dynamic meshes based on the combination of spring-based smoothing and local remeshing methods,and the lower-upper symmetric-Gauss-Seidel(LU-SGS)iteration and Harten-Lax-van Leer-Einfeldt-Wada(HLLEW)space discrete methods based on the shear stress transport(SST)turbulence model are used to calculate the aerodynamic force.The constraints of the rudder motions are fixed at the end of structural model of the flying wing UAV,and the structural geometric nonlinearities are also considered in the flying wing UAV with a high aspect ratio.The interfaces between structural and aerodynamic models are built with an exact match surface where load transferring is performed based on 3Dinterpolation.The flying wing UAV transonic buzz responses based on the aerodynamic structural coupling method are studied,and the rudder buzz responses and aileron,elevator and flap vibration responses caused by rudder motion are also investigated.The effects of attack,height,rotating angular frequency and Mach number under transonic conditions on the flying wing UAV rudder buzz responses are discussed.The results can be regarded as a reference for the flying wing UAV engineering vibration analysis.