Seamless Active Morphing Wing Simultaneous Gust and Maneuver Load Alleviation

This paper deals with the simultaneous gust and maneuver load alleviation problem of a seamless active morphing wing. The incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion with quadratic programming control allocation and virtual shape functions (denoted as INDI-QP-V) is proposed to fulfill this goal. The designed control allocator provides an optimal solution while satisfying actuator position constraints, rate constraints, and relative position constraints. Virtual shape functions ensure the smoothness of the morphing wing at every moment. In the presence of model uncertainties, external disturbances, and control allocation errors, the closed-loop stability is guaranteed in the Lyapunov sense. Wind tunnel tests demonstrate that INDI-QP-V can make the seamless wing morph actively to resist “1-cos” gusts and modify the spanwise lift distribution at the same time. The wing root shear force and bending moment have been alleviated by more than 44% despite unexpected actuator fault and nonlinear backlash. Moreover, during the experiment, all the input constraints were satisfied, the wing shape was smooth all the time, and the control law was executed in real time. Furthermore, as compared with the linear quadratic Gaussian control, the hardware implementation of INDI-QP-V is easier; the robust performance of INDI-QP-V is also superior.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Aerospace Structures & Computational Mechanic

Overview of the SmartX Wing Technology Integrator

This article describes the challenges of integrating smart sensing, actuation, and control concepts into an over-sensed and over-actuated technology integrator. This technology integrator has more control inputs than the expected responses or outputs (over-actuated), and its every state is measured using more than one sensor system (over-sensed). The hardware integration platform is chosen to be a wind tunnel model of a low-speed aircraft wing such that it can be tested in a large university-level wind tunnel. This hardware technology integrator is designed for multiple objectives. The nature of these objectives is aerodynamic, structural, and aeroelastic, or, more specifically; drag reduction, static and dynamics loads control, aeroelastic stability control, and lift control. Enabling technologies, such as morphing, piezoelectric actuation and sensing, and fibre-optic sensing are selected to fulfil the mentioned objectives. The technology integration challenges are morphing, actuation integration, sensor integration, software and data integration, and control system integration. The built demonstrator shows the intended level of technology integration.Aerospace Structures & Computational MechanicsArts & CraftsStructural Integrity & CompositesNovel Aerospace Material