Flight Control with Distributed Effectors
Stefan R. Bieniawski, Ilan M. Kroo, David H. Wolpert · AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit · 2005
Recent developments in actuator technology have resulted in small, simple devices capable of affecting the flow field over flight vehicles sufficiently to generate control forces. One of the devices which has been under investigation is the Miniature-Trailing Edge Effector (MiTE), which consists of a small, 1-5 % chord, moveable surface mounted at the wing trailing edge. The high bandwidth and good control authority make the device an ideal candidate for control of both the rigid body and flexible modes of a flight vehicle. Unfortunately traditional control techniques do not address the non-linear nature of the device or the competing performance goals arising from large numbers of distributed devices. Novel approaches to control design are therefore required. To demonstrate the potential of this type of flight control architecture and to explore suitable control synthesis techniques, a remotely piloted flight vehicle has been developed. This paper details the flight vehicle including a distributed flight control system based upon MiTEs. The latter system includes distributed sensing, logic, and actuation. This paper also describes an applicable novel control synthesis technique based upon the theory of collectives. The theory and its application to the design of distributed flight control systems is presented. Results of flight tests with conventional control surfaces and with a MiTE based control system are provided.