Demonstration of Autonomous Differential Throttle-based Flight Control for Aircraft with Distributed Electric Propulsion

A series of RDT&E activities is proposed to create and demonstrate a reconfigurable, autonomous flight controller for the Aircraft for Distributed Electric Propulsion Throttle-based Flight Control (ADEPT-FC) which was designed and built in Phase I, a 33 lb remote controlled aircraft featuring eight overwing electric ducted fans (EDFs) distributed spanwise along the wing’s trailing edge. The proposed study will be the first to show that a complete and accurate description of the propulsion airframe integration (PAI) effects enables autonomous flight of a DEP aircraft using a standard approach to model-based flight control. A combination of modeling & 6DoF dynamic simulation leveraging OpenVSP/VSPAERO, wind-tunnel and hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) ground testing, and system identification (SysID) flight testing will be completed to support the design of the autonomous controller. The resultant controller will be demonstrated in flight on the ADEPT-FC research aircraft at multiple stages of development, including trim flight with uniform and asymmetric throttle mixing as well as DEP system fault tolerance through autonomous controller reconfiguration. Additional research products from the study will include an empirically-derived body of knowledge pertaining to PAI for DEP aircraft, a “DEP Array” custom component for OpenVSP, and VSPAERO validation artifacts to characterize the tool’s ability to predict PAI behaviors, all of which are intended to be disseminated open source to the aerospace community. Autonomous flight control of DEP aircraft with strong PAI effects is one piece of a greater integrated autonomous controller (IAC) envisioned for hybrid electric distributed propulsion (HEDP) aircraft, a technology foreseen by ESAero to enable substantial risk probability and criticality reduction, improved energy efficiency, and reduced pilot workload.