Sliding mode tracking control for miniature unmanned helicopters

A sliding mode control design for a miniature unmanned helicopter is presented. The control objective is to let the helicopter track some predefined velocity and yaw trajectories. A new sliding mode control design method is developed based on a linearized dynamic model. In order to facilitate the control design, the helicopter’s dynamic model is divided into two subsystems,such as the longitudinal-lateral and the heading-heave subsystem. The proposed controller employs sliding mode control technique to compensate for the immeasurable flapping angles’ dynamic effects and external disturbances. The global asymptotic stability(GAS) of the closed-loop system is proved by the Lyapunov based stability analysis. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed controller can achieve superior tracking performance compared with the proportionalintegral-derivative(PID) and linear-quadratic regulator(LQR) cascaded controller in the presence of wind gust disturbances.     

Nonlinear Adaptive Robust Force Control of Hydraulic Load Simulator

This paper deals with the high performance force control of hydraulic load simulator. Many previous works for hydraulic force control are based on their linearization equations, but hydraulic inherent nonlinear properties and uncertainties make the conventional feedback proportional-integral-derivative control not yield to high-performance requirements. In this paper, a nonlinear system model is derived and linear parameterization is made for adaptive control. Then a discontinuous projection-based nonlinear adaptive robust force controller is developed for hydraulic load simulator. The proposed controller constructs an asymptotically stable adaptive controller and adaptation laws, which can compensate for the system nonlinearities and uncertain parameters. Meanwhile a well-designed robust controller is also developed to cope with the hydraulic system uncertain nonlinearities. The controller achieves a guaranteed transient performance and final tracking accuracy in the presence of both parametric uncertainties and uncertain nonlinearities; in the absence of uncertain nonlinearities, the scheme also achieves asymptotic tracking performance. Simulation and experiment comparative results are obtained to verify the high-performance nature of the proposed control strategy and the tracking accuracy is greatly improved.     

A Backstepping Simple Adaptive Control Application to Flexible Space Structures

Although the simple adaptive control (SAC) is widely studied both in theory and application in flexible space structure control and other control problems, it is restricted by the almost strictly positive real (ASPR) conditions. In most practical control problems, the ASPR conditions are not satisfied. Therefore, based on the SAC theory, this paper proposes a backstepping simple adaptive control algorithm which suits the system with arbitrary relative degree with no need of parallel feedforward compensator. The proposed control algorithm consists of decomposition of the arbitrary relative degree system into a known subsystem and an unknown ASPR subsystem which are connected in cascade, design of constant output feedback controller for the known subsystem, and implementation of backstepping method and SAC of the unknown ASPR subsystem. Inheriting the characteristics of the SAC, this method can be adaptive online for the parameter uncertainties. Then, the application of the proposed controller to large flexible space structure with collocated sensors and actuators is studied, and the simulation results validate the proposed controller. It is a new strategy to apply the classical SAC to high relative degree plants.     

Attitude tracking control for variable structure near space vehicles based on switched nonlinear systems

An adaptive robust attitude tracking control law based on switched nonlinear systems is presented for a variable structure near space vehicle (VSNSV) in the presence of uncertainties and disturbances. The adaptive fuzzy systems are employed for approximating unknown functions in the flight dynamic model and their parameters are updated online. To improve the flight robust performance, robust controllers with adaptive gains are designed to compensate for the approximation errors and thus they have less design conservation. Moreover, a systematic procedure is developed for the synthesis of adaptive fuzzy dynamic surface control (DSC) approach. According to the common Lyapunov function theory, it is proved that all signals of the closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded by the continuous controller. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control scheme.     

Dynamics modeling and control of a transport aircraft for ultra-low altitude airdrop

The nonlinear aircraft model with heavy cargo moving inside is derived by using the separation body method, which can describe the influence of the moving cargo on the aircraft attitude and altitude accurately. Furthermore, the nonlinear system is decoupled and linearized through the input–output feedback linearization method. On this basis, an iterative quasi-sliding mode(SM)flight controller for speed and pitch angle control is proposed. At the first-level SM, a global dynamic switching function is introduced thus eliminating the reaching phase of the sliding motion.At the second-level SM, a nonlinear function with the property of ‘‘smaller errors correspond to bigger gains and bigger errors correspond to saturated gains' ' is designed to form an integral sliding manifold, and the overcompensation of the integral term to big errors is weakened. Lyapunovbased analysis shows that the controller with strong robustness can reject both constant and time-varying model uncertainties. The performance of the proposed control strategy is verified in a maximum load airdrop mission.     

Research of Compound Controller for Flight Simulator with Disturbance Observer

A compound controller is proposed to alleviate the considerable chattering in output of zero phase error tracking controller (ZPETC), when the flight simulator losses command data of simulation signal. Besides, the shortcomings, caused by conventional differential methods in retrieving velocity and acceleration signals, are avoided to a certain extent. The compound controller based on disturbance observer (DOB) is composed of a feed-forward controller and a feedback controller. It estimates velocity and acceleration of unknown tracking signal, and also velocity response with an approximate method for differential. The experiments on a single-axis flight simulator show that the proposed method has strong robustness against parameter perturbations and external disturbances, owing to the introduced DOB. Compared with the scheme with ZPETC, the proposed scheme possesses more simple design and better tracking performance. Moreover, it is less sensitive to position command distortion of flight simulator.     

Reconfigurable Flight Control Design for Combat Flying Wing with Multiple Control Surfaces

With control using redundant multiple control surface arrangement and large-deflection drag rudders,a combat flying wing has a higher probability for control surface failures.Therefore,its flight control system must be able to reconfigure after such failures.Considering three types of typical control surface failures(lock-in-place(LIP),loss-of-effectiveness(LOE) and float),flight control reconfiguration characteristic and capability of such aircraft types are analyzed.Because of the control surface redundancy,the aircraft using the dynamic inversion flight control law already has a control allocation block.In this paper,its flight control configuration during the above failures is achieved by modifying this block.It is shown that such a reconfigurable flight control design is valid,through numerical simulations of flight attitude control task.Results indicate that,in the circumstances of control surface failures with limited degree and the degradation of the flying quality level,a combat flying wing adopting this flight control reconfiguration approach based on control allocation could guarantee its flight safety and perform some flight combat missions.     

Model reference adaptive control with smooth switching scheme for piecewise linear systems and its application in turbofan engine control

A model reference adaptive control (MRAC) with smooth switching scheme was proposed for piecewise linear systems, and the method was utilized in turbofan engine control to avoid the discontinuity of control input. In this scheme, each sub-region of the operating envelope had its own MRAC controller, and smooth indicator function based smooth switching scheme was introduced to switch multiple controllers smoothly at the boundary of adjacent sub-regions. The Lyapunov stability analysis indicated that the proposed smooth switching scheme can guarantee the convergence of the closed-loop system during the controllers switching. The tracking error system was converted into a switched system to analyze the global stability of the closed-loop system. The advantage of the method was that the chattering of system output and instability caused by asynchronous switching can be eliminated. The simulation illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme in comparison with the existing MRAC controller with gain scheduling for turbofan engine.      

Closed-loop dynamic control allocation for aircraft with multiple actuators

A closed-loop control allocation method is proposed for a class of aircraft with multiple actuators. Nonlinear dynamic inversion is used to design the baseline attitude controller and derive the desired moment increment. And a feedback loop for the moment increment produced by the deflections of actuators is added to the angular rate loop, then the error between the desired and actual moment increment is the input of the dynamic control allocation. Subsequently, the stability of the closed-loop dynamic control allocation system is analyzed in detail. Especially, the closedloop system stability is also analyzed in the presence of two types of actuator failures: loss of effectiveness and lock-in-place actuator failures, where a fault detection subsystem to identify the actuator failures is absent. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a canard rotor/wing (CRW) aircraft model in fixed-wing mode, which has multiple actuators for flight control. The nonlinear simulation demonstrates that this method can guarantee the stability and tracking performance whether the actuators are healthy or fail.     

STUDY ON GAIN-SCHEDULING PROBLEM IN FLIGHT CONTROL

Gain-scheduling has got its wide applications in modern flight control, in which control gains are scheduled with variables such as dynamic pressure and Mach number, to meet dynamic response requirements in different flight conditions. Classical gain-scheduling approaches may result in some problems, which can not guarantee global robustness and stability in transitions of different flight conditions. Gain-scheduling problem is systematically investigated from robustness point of view in the paper. Detailed procedures for gain-scheduled controller to achieve both robustness and stability performance are given and applied to a typical flight control system. For switching stability problems of different flight conditions in flight control systems, a new approach is proposed, in which different flight conditions are reduced into a parameter varying plant using interpolation firstly, and then parameter-varying controller design goes next. Though interpolation errors may exist, the robust parameter varying controller design can compensate for those uncertainties and errors, and finally achieve good performance of robustness and switching stability during transitions. Illustrative simulation at last shows satisfactory results.     

直升机/涡轴发动机综合系统鲁棒抗扰控制设计

提出了一种直升机/涡轴发动机综合系统鲁棒抗扰控制方法。分别设计了基于线性矩阵不等式(LMI)的鲁棒保性能控制的直升机四通道多变量控制器和涡轴发动机转速控制器;为了进一步提高发动机自由涡轮转速环的抗扰能力,结合自抗扰控制(ADRC)方法,构建了涡轴发动机转速鲁棒保性能控制+扭矩ADRC补偿的控制方案,充分利用了ADRC控制强的干扰补偿能力,避免了鲁棒设计方法的保守性。在UH-60直升机/涡轴发动机综合模型仿真环境下通过模拟直升机大幅急速升降操作,验证了直升机/涡轴发动机综合系统所采用的鲁棒抗扰控制,尤其是涡轴发动机鲁棒自抗扰控制,具有理想的抗扰控制效果,能够抑制直升机机动操作过程中大的扭矩扰动对涡轴发动机造成的不利影响,从而使直升机具有更好的机动能力。     

基于直升机/涡轴发动机综合仿真平台的发动机非线性模型预测控制

 基于具有可靠置信度的直升机/涡轴发动机综合仿真平台,研究了涡轴发动机带约束优化的非线性模型预测控制(NMPC)技术。首先通过设计多输出迭代约简最小二乘支持向量回归机(RRLSSVR),训练具有较好实时性、精度及泛化能力的内嵌式预测模型,在高度0~5 km、前飞速度0~75 m/s范围内模型精度达5‰。其次,考虑了扭矩、燃油流量、动力涡轮转速、燃气涡轮转速等综合信息及相关约束对控制效果的影响,利用在线序列二次规划(SQP)算法实现滚动优化控制,而后加入目标转速偏差的积分项以消除静差,保证输出恒定。最后,通过对直升机进行机动飞行大扰动仿真验证了该预测控制器对扰动的抑制能力,相比传统串级PID控制,能够显著降低动力涡轮转速下垂/超调量,达到更好的控制品质。     

一种变旋翼转速直升机/涡轴发动机非线性模型预测控制方法研究

为了实现变旋翼转速直升机/涡轴发动机快速响应控制,提出了一种基于神经网络的直升机旋翼预测模型与基于状态变量模型的涡轴发动机预测模型的新型非线性模型预测控制方法。所建目标函数除了包含转速控制指标外,还考虑了经两级变速双离合器传动机构传扭后发动机输出轴的转子动力学特性。不同飞行任务下的数值仿真结果表明:相对于PID控制器而言,非线性模型预测控制器可在满足压气机转速、发动机静强度等限制条件下使动力涡轮转速在变旋翼转速过程中的超调量减小50%,下垂量降至0.2%以内,实现了涡轴发动机的快速响应控制的同时,有利于改善发动机使用寿命。     

无人驾驶直升机发动机模糊自适应PID控制

针对某型无人驾驶直升机发动机控制的特点,提出恒量供油、恒速控制和总距前馈补偿控制的复合控制策略,在飞行控制计算机内建立发动机模糊自适应PID控制器,利用模糊规则和推理来在线调整PID参数,使发动机安全平滑启动,并在各种功率状态下保持输出轴转速恒定。经含实物仿真试验、地面试车、系留试验以及无人机整机试飞测试,所设计的发动机控制方案动态响应速度快,对总距变化等干扰的抑制作用强,能保证主旋翼在各种飞行状态下获得最佳的气动效率,改进无人直升机的飞行性能。      

一种直升机自旋训练过程涡轴发动机控制规律设计与仿真

针对直升机自旋训练过程中涡轴发动机快速响应要求,提出了一种以燃油流量和导叶角为控制量的鲁棒控制规律抑制自由涡轮转速瞬态下垂.首先,通过改进UH-60直升机/T700发动机综合模型,使之能够模拟自旋进入及自旋恢复过程动态变化.其次,提出并设计一种基于燃油流量和导叶调节的涡轴发动机鲁棒控制规律,并通过典型的自旋训练过程仿真,验证了该控制规律相比仅以燃油流量为变量的控制规律,自由涡轮转速瞬态下垂量降低至3%以下,且燃油流量变化更加平缓,改善了执行机构的工作条件.     

基于直升机/ 发动机综合模型的变旋翼转速控制研究

为了实现直升机旋翼转速在宽广范围内连续变化且涡轴发动机连续提供输出轴功率,采用1种扭矩序列转移控制方案来实现该传动链。通过2台涡轴发动机和2台多级变速器与旋翼协调工作,发动机依次连接或脱开旋翼,提供旋翼转速大范围内变化,并提供旋翼连续变化的功率。在扭矩转移过程中,针对发动机扭矩强扰动问题设计了鲁棒LMI控制器+ADRC扭矩前馈补偿控制器,最后基于直升机／发动机综合模型进行数值仿真,验证了扭矩转移方案的可行性。仿真结果表明：在转移过程中的扭矩强扰动对发动机动力涡轮转速的影响较小,旋翼转速可以实现较大范围内的快速平滑变化。     

涡轴发动机自适应非线性预测控制

为了实现当直升机旋翼负载变化时,尽量保持功率涡轮转速恒定,并提高系统动态品质,研究了一种针对涡轴发动机的自适应非线性预测控制(ANMPC)算法.基于涡轴发动机稳态数据和动态特性,采用递归最小二乘法(RLS)进行模型参数辨识,建立了具有在线自适应能力的涡轴发动机数值-ARX(auto regressive with external input)并联预测模型.在此基础上,通过多步输出预测和反馈校正,利用序列二次型优化(SQP)算法,进行在线滚动优化,从而获得了涡轴发动机ANMPC控制器.仿真结果表明:当旋翼负载变化时,相比于传统的串联PID(比例-积分-控制)控制器,ANMPC控制器能够使得功率涡轮转速收敛更快,超调量/下垂量更小.      

基于在线滚动LS-SVR的涡轴发动机混合预测控制

提出了一种串级PID+非线性模型预测控制(NMPC)的混合控制方案,用于涡轴发动机控制系统中。其中:主控制回路采用串级PID控制器以消除静差保证系统稳定;带约束优化的预测控制器则用于实时燃油补偿,以增强发动机系统对直升机功率需求的快速跟随能力。该预测控制器是基于在线预测模型实现,首先在VC环境下设计在线滚动最小二乘支持向量回归机(OSLS-SVR),在线训练高精度、实时性好的内嵌式预测模型,其测试精度可达3‰;而后利用该模型与序列二次规划(SQP)算法完成滚动优化,建立预测控制器;最后,在UH-60A直升机/T700涡轴发动机综合模型仿真环境下,通过模拟直升机大幅急速升降操作,验证了该混合预测控制方案对大扰动具有较强的抑制能力及鲁棒性,从而使直升机获得更好的机动性能。     

教与学优化算法在风力机变桨自抗扰控制中的应用

随着风力机的发展越来越智能化,除了要求风力机的运行可靠性,还要求其有稳定的输出功率。为了使风力机变桨控制器在运行过程中具有优良的动态品质,提出了一种自抗扰控制(ADRC)的变桨距控制方案,但ADRC也存在参数多、整定难度大这一明显缺点。为此,将教与学算法应用到ADRC的整定过程中,实现了参数的自动整定。仿真结果验证了通过教与学算法自动整定ADRC参数的可行性,与传统PID控制器相比,整定后的ADRC能较好地满足风力机变桨距控制要求,有效维持了风力机输出功率的稳定性。     

基于预测扭矩前馈的涡轴发动机内模控制方法

基于内模原理设计了涡轴发动机功率涡轮转速控制器.针对主旋翼扭矩变化对功率涡轮转速的干扰,提出了一种基于极端学习机的扭矩预测方法.极端学习机训练基于动态仿真数据,其输入通过相关分析获得.基于内模原理的功率涡轮转速控制器采用极点配置的设计方法,将输入信号的内模直接加入控制器,实现鲁棒跟踪.扭矩前馈采用比例微分(PD)控制策略,实现对发动机负载变化干扰的有效补偿.数字仿真结果表明:极端学习机扭矩预测精度高,扭矩相对误差小于1.5‰,与不加前馈控制相比,所提出的控制方法减小了机动飞行过程中功率涡轮转速的超调或下垂30%以上.