Coordinated Roll Control of Conformal Finless Flying Wing Aircraft

Abstract

Attitude control of tailless aircraft is typically achieved through a system of trailing-edge flaps that produce coupled control effects in pitch, roll and yaw due to changes in lift and drag distributions. This paper presents a novel control allocation method which allows conformal trailing-edge controls to generate yawing moments with no coupling, thereby simplifying the required control suite. The method is demonstrated through modelling of a coordinated roll manoeuvre of a tailless aircraft in which yaw control is provided by trailing-edge flaps only. For a typical tailless aircraft configuration, it is shown that a coordinated rolling manoeuvre can be achieved with a reduction of at least 30% of the required control deflection compared to solutions using non-conformal controls such as split drag rudders.

Keywords

• Aerospace simulation
• attitude control
• control design
• nonlinear control systems
• unmanned aerial vehicles
• conformal aerodynamic controls