Distributed Modeling and Control of Large-Scale Highly Flexible Solar-Powered UAV

The modeling, stability, and control characteristics of a large scale highly flexible solar-powered UAV with distributed all-span multielevons were presented. A geometrically nonlinear intrinsic beam model was introduced to establish the structural/flight dynamics coupled equation of motion (EOM); based on it, the explicit decoupled linear flight dynamics and structural dynamics EOM were derived through mean axis theory. Undeformed, deformed, and flexible models were compared through trimming and modal analysis. Since the deformation of wing has increased the UAV’s moment of inertia about the pitch axis, the frequency of short period mode has obviously decreased for the deformed model. The serious coupling between short period mode and 1st bending mode also significantly influences the roots of short period mode of flexible model. So flexible model was the only one which is able to accurately estimate the flight dynamics behaviors and was selected as the later control model. Forty distributed elevons and LQG/LTR controller were employed to control the attitude and suppress the aeroelastic deformation of the UAV simultaneously. The dynamics performance, robustness, and simulation results show that they were suitable for large scale highly flexible solar-powered UAV.