Integrated Adaptive Control and Control Allocation System for Morphing Wing

Recent studies have shown that adapting wing geometry to meet flight load requirements yields optimal performance in disparate mission roles. Though current aircraft vary wing sweep and extend flaps to produce large scale flow changes, they have little control over the flow. Morphing aircraft structures that utilize a large number of small shape change effectors provide the degrees of freedom required for large scale flow control and the ability to meet dynamic flight load requirements. The purpose of this project is to resolve some open control system related issues by designing an integrated morphing flight control and control allocation system and implementing it in a laboratory environment. Specific issues to be considered in Phase I are actuator modeling including failures, control system design for stability and performance in the presence of failures, and control power allocation. Phase I work will also develop concepts for hardware in the loop testing in Phase II. We plan to provide a complete numerical and hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) evaluation of a morphing wing in Phase II. Boeing Phantom Works (St. Louis) will provide technical support in modeling and hardware testing areas during Phase I and II.