| Patrick Osterloh |
Research Associate, RWTH Aachen University, Institute of Flight System Dynamics, 52062, Aachen, Germany. | | Johannes Krimphove |
Research Associate, RWTH Aachen University, Institute of Flight System Dynamics, 52062, Aachen, Germany. | | Eva König |
Research Associate, RWTH Aachen University, Institute of Flight System Dynamics, 52062, Aachen, Germany. | | Tobias Islam |
Chief Engineer, RWTH Aachen University, Institute for Flight System Dynamics, 52062, Aachen, Germany. | | Dieter Moormann |
Head of Institute, RWTH Aachen University, Institute for Flight System Dynamics, 52062, Aachen, Germany. |
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| Abstract:
This paper presents a flight control architecture for safe BVLOS tilt-wing operations. The control architecture is based on a cascaded structure including attitude and velocity control with a defined interface to the MPC-based path controller. To meet the requirements of BVLOS operation, a robust LQR-based attitude control design is applied over the entire speed range of the tilt-wing aircraft. In order to achieve safe and reliable BVLOS operation of the aircraft, even in the event of a failure, a safety concept has been developed that provides various functionalities operating at different layers of the flight control architecture. For this purpose, these safety functionalities include actions to continue the flight under specified restrictions, abort the flight mission and land at a pre-defined safety point, and degrade malfunctioning controller components for immediate safe landing. During an extensive flight campaign in Saxony, Germany, the reliability of the safety functions were proven and demonstrated, especially in the case of an elevator failure and in dealing with an intruder. Thus, the developed flight control architecture laid the foundation for consistently safe operation of the tilt-wing aircraft throughout the entire campaign.
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View PDF CEAS-GNC-2024-097