Gust alleviation of highly flexible UAVs with artificial hair sensors

Weihua Su; Gregory W. Reich

doi:10.1117/12.2085575

3 April 2015 Gust alleviation of highly flexible UAVs with artificial hair sensors

Weihua Su, Gregory W. Reich

Proceedings Volume 9435, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2015; 94350X (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2085575
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2015, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Artificial hair sensors (AHS) have been recently developed in Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) using carbon nanotube (CNT). The deformation of CNT in air flow causes voltage and current changes in the circuit, which can be used to quantify the dynamic pressure and aerodynamic load along the wing surface. AFRL has done a lot of essential work in design, manufacturing, and measurement of AHSs. The work in this paper is to bridge the current AFRL’s work on AHSs and their feasible applications in flight dynamics and control (e.g., the gust alleviation) of highly flexible aircraft. A highly flexible vehicle is modeled using a strain-based geometrically nonlinear beam formulation, coupled with finite-state inflow aerodynamics. A feedback control algorithm for the rejection of gust perturbations will be developed. A simplified Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) controller will be implemented based on the state-space representation of the linearized system. All AHS measurements will be used as the control input, i.e., wing sectional aerodynamic loads will be defined as the control output for designing the feedback gain. Once the controller is designed, closed-loop aeroelastic simulations will be performed to evaluate the performance of different controllers with the force feedback and be compared to traditional controller designs with the state feedback. From the study, the feasibility of AHSs in flight control will be assessed. The whole study will facilitate in building a fly-by-feel simulation environment for autonomous vehicles.

Citation Download Citation

Weihua Su and Gregory W. Reich "Gust alleviation of highly flexible UAVs with artificial hair sensors", Proc. SPIE 9435, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2015, 94350X (3 April 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2085575

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