Control Allocation with Adaptive Augmentation for Aerodynamic Optimization of Trailing Edge Morphing Aircraft

Abstract

This paper presents a control allocation framework with adaptive augmentation for a trailing edge morphing aircraft, providing stability guarantees under uncertainty while exploiting the available morphing degrees of freedom to optimize aerodynamic efficiency. A baseline controller is designed using the nominal aircraft model to establish the desired closed-loop reference dynamics. For the aerodynamics, the wing shape is optimized dependent on the flight state to achieve a target elliptical lift distribution corresponding to minimum induced drag. The adaptive augmentation is tailored to the control allocation problem to account for the uncertain system dynamics and stabilize the aircraft around the reference dynamics. The resulting stabilization condition is formulated as hard constraint in the allocation problem while minimizing deviations from the corresponding state-dependent aerodynamically optimal wing shape. Numerical results demonstrate that the adaptive augmentation compensates for matched uncertainties while the control allocation optimizes the wing shape with respect to the reference elliptical lift distribution.