Simultaneous Longitudinal and Lateral Flight Control Systems Design for Both Passive and Active Morphing TUAVs

Abstract

In this article, simultaneous longitudinal and lateral flight control systems design for both passive and active morphing tactical unmanned aerial vehicles (TUAVs) is first time applied for autonomous flight performance maximization in the literature. For this purpose longitudinal and lateral dynamics modelling of TUAVs produced in Erciyes University, Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Model Aircraft Laboratory are considered in order to obtain simulation environments. Our produced TUAV is called as ZANKA-III which has weight of 50 kg, range of around 3000 km, endurance of around 28 hour, and ceiling altitude of around 12500 m. Von-Karman turbulence modelling is used in order to model atmospheric turbulence during flight in both longitudinal and lateral simulation environments. A stochastic optimization method called as simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (i.e. SPSA) is also first time applied in order to obtain optimum dimensions of morphing parameters (i.e. extension ratios of wingspan and tailspan, assembly positions of wing and tailplane to fuselage) and optimum magnitudes of longitudinal and lateral controllers' gains (i.e. P, I and D gains) while minimizing cost index capturing terms about both longitudinal and lateral autonomous flight performances and there exists lower and upper constraints on all optimization variables in the literature.