Sliding mode control design for oblique wing aircraft in wing skewing process

When the wing of Oblique Wing Aircraft (OWA) is skewed, the center of gravity, inertia and aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft all significantly change, causing an undesirable flight dynamic response, affecting the flying qualities, and even endangering the flight safety. In this study, the dynamic response of an OWA in the wing skewing process is simulated, showing that the three-axis movements of the OWA are highly coupled and present nonlinear characteristics during the wing skewing. As the roll control efficiency of the aileron decreases due to the shortened control arm in an oblique configuration, the all-moving horizontal tail is used for additional roll and the control allocation is performed based on minimum control energy. Given the properties of pitch-roll-yaw coupling and control input and state coupling, and the difficulty of establishing an accurate aerodynamic model in the wing skewing process due to unsteady aerodynamic force, a multi-loop sliding mode controller is formulated by the time-scale separation method. The closed-loop simulation results show that the asymmetric aerodynamics can be balanced and that the velocity and altitude of the aircraft maintain stable, which means that a smooth transition is obtained during the OWA’s wing skewing.