Study On Distributed Control System For Aircraft Using Effectors Array

Effectors array plays an important role in smart morphing aircraft. Micro Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) can self-sensing, control and actuate. Micro effectors always achieve the control authority through array. "Distributed" is the most important characteristic. New concepts such as "Smart Control", "Multi-Agent System" and "Distributed Control System" have great potential in the effectors array control system design. A theory called "Probability Collectives" is suitable to address the distributed and nonlinear problems. This work is to design a distributed control system for aircraft using effectors array.The main contents in this work:Firstly, the basic "Probability Collectives" (PC) theory was introduced briefly. The key aspect of PC is to recast the optimization from a search across the variable space to search across the probability space of the variable to minimize Lagrange function. The implementation of PC was described in detail and several examples were developed to demonstrate the potential of this theory.Secondly, a tailless aircraft was chosen to be the demonstrated model; effectors array consisting of eight actuators were used. The model was created by an entity model created software, the aerodynamics and control effects were calculated and analyzed by a vortex lattice program; and then, the dynamics was derived and analyzed.Thirdly, after a state-feedback controller was presented, the distributed control system which using PC method was designed to augment the flight stability.Finally, a series of numerical simulations including open loop, independent loop, closed loop and failure tolerance were developed. The results show that the PC distributed control system can augment the stability successfully; and during the failure took place, the control system could be reconfigured and keep the aircraft working well.Contributions:Research on distributed control for effectors array; design the control system for tailless aircraft using Probability Collectives theory.