Design and experimental testing of a control system for a morphing wing model actuated with miniature BLDC motors

The paper deals with the design and experimental validation of the actuation mechanism control system for a morphing wing model. The experimental morphable wing model manufactured in this project is a full-size scale wing tip for a real aircraft equipped with an aileron. The morphing actuation of the model is based on a mechanism with four similar in house designed and manufactured actuators, positioned inside the wing on two parallel lines. Each of the four actuators used a BrushLess Direct Current (BLDC) electric motor integrated with a mechanical part performing the conversion of the angular displacements into linear displacements. The following have been chosen as successive steps in the design of the actuator control system: (A) Mathematical and software modelling of the actuator; (B) Design of the control system architecture and tuning using Internal Model Control (IMC) methodology; (C) Numerical simulation of the controlled actuator and its testing on bench and wind tunnel. The morphing wing experimental model is tested both at the laboratory level, with no airflow, to evaluate the components integration and the whole system functioning, but also in the wind tunnel, in the presence of airflow, to evaluate its behavior and the aerodynamic gain.