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Development of Flight Control Law for Improvement of Uncommanded Lateral Motion of the Fighter Aircraft

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Abstract

The Abrupt Wing Stall (AWS) at moderate Angle-of-Attacks (AoA) and transonic flight conditions can result in uncommanded lateral motions such as heavy wing, wing drop and wing rock that degrade handling qualities, mission performance and safety of flight for the aircraft. This phenomenon caused by asymmetric wing flows makes it difficult to perform precision tracking or maneuvering in the transonic flight envelope. According to the previous research results, this substantial phenomenon has occurred in a large number of the fighter aircraft programs, typically at the early flight test development stage, and a lot of budgets and efforts are required through the development period of the aircraft. To compensate for this drawback, Free-To-Roll (FTR) wind tunnel test is adopted as a method to identify the uncommanded lateral motions of the aircraft and improve the flight characteristics at the configuration design stage. However, using only the existing control methods such as the feed-forward control methods as well as the configuration design can reduce limitedly the uncommanded lateral motion. Besides, the feedback control methods using optimal control, adaptive and neural network control which do not provide a deterministic solution are limited to obtain the airworthiness certification. This paper presents a new design approach in which uncommanded lateral motions of the aircraft can be reduced even more than the existing methods. That is the additional augmentation control method, using angular acceleration measurement, that improves the flight characteristics using a feedback control technique based on the Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI). To evaluate the performances of the proposed control method, we perform the frequency-domain linear analysis and time-domain numerical simulations based on the mathematical model of advanced trainer aircraft. The evaluation result reveals that the proposed control method reduces effectively uncommanded lateral motions and improves the handling qualities of the aircraft.

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Abbreviations

\(\mathbf{x}\) :

State vector

\(\mathbf{u}\) :

Control input vector

\(f\) :

Nonlinear state dynamic function

\(g\) :

Nonlinear control distribution function

u 0 :

Previous control command (°)

\(\Delta \mathbf{u}\) :

Incremental control command (°)

\(\Delta \mathbf{d}\) :

Virtual control command (°)

u cmd :

Current control command (°)

\({\dot{\mathbf{x}}}_{des}\) :

Desired angular acceleration (°/sec2)

\({\dot{\mathbf{x}}}_{obm}\) :

Angular acceleration calculated from OBM (°/sec2)

\({\dot{\mathbf{x}}}_{meas}\) :

Angular acceleration measured from sensor (°/sec2)

\({\dot{\mathbf{x}}}_{add}\) :

Angular acceleration for additional augmentation control (°/sec2)

p s :

Stability axis roll rate (°/sec)

\(q\) :

Pitch rate (°/sec)

\(r\) :

Yaw rate (°/sec)

\(\beta\) :

Angle of sideslip (°)

\(\dot{\beta }\) :

Rate of angle of sideslip (°/sec)

\({\dot{p}}_{des}\) :

Desired roll angular acceleration (°/sec2)

\({\dot{r}}_{des}\) :

Desired yaw angular acceleration (°/sec2)

K aug :

Additional augmentation control gains

\({\zeta }_{dr}\) :

Dutch-roll damping ratio

\({\omega }_{dr}\) :

Dutch-roll frequency (rad)

\(\tau\) :

Roll mode time constant (sec)

\({K}_{r1}\) :

Flying quality parameter of roll command

\({K}_{r2}\) :

Flying quality parameter of roll rate feedback

\({K}_{y1}\) :

Flying quality parameter of yaw command

\({K}_{y2}\) :

Flying quality parameter of sideslip feedback

\({K}_{y3}\) :

Flying quality parameter of sideslip rate feedback

\({I}_{ii}\) :

Principal moment of inertia (slug-ft2)

\({I}_{ij}\) :

Production moment of inertia (slug-ft2)

\({L}_{k}\) :

Linearized roll moment for k (\(k=\beta , p, r, {\delta }_{ea}, {\delta }_{aa}, {\delta }_{r}\))

\({N}_{k}\) :

Linearized yaw moment for k (\(k=\beta , p, r, {\delta }_{ea}, {\delta }_{aa}, {\delta }_{r}\))

\({\delta }_{s}\) :

Deflection of control surface for s (s = aa, ea, r)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Flight Control Law Team, Korea Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Sacheon-si, 52529, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea

    Chong-Sup Kim

  2. Flight Control Test Team, Korea Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Sacheon-si, 52529, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea

    Chang-Ho Ji

  3. School of Aerospace and Software Engineering, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju-si, 52828, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea

    Byoung Soo Kim

Authors
  1. Chong-Sup Kim
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  2. Chang-Ho Ji
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  3. Byoung Soo Kim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chong-Sup Kim.

Appendix

Appendix

See Appendix Figs. 11, 12.

Fig. 11
figure 11

Result of frequency-domain linear analysis without time delay effect for ratio of K=0.0 and K=0.6

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Fig. 12
figure 12

Result of frequency-domain linear analysis with time delay and control surface synchronization for ratio of K=0.6

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Kim, CS., Ji, CH. & Kim, B.S. Development of Flight Control Law for Improvement of Uncommanded Lateral Motion of the Fighter Aircraft. Int. J. Aeronaut. Space Sci. 21, 1059–1077 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42405-020-00308-0

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