Browsing by Author "Monteiro, Alexandra Teles de Lima Ferreira"
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- Hybrid Robust Distributed Propulsion Control of Lateral-Directional Flight DynamicsPublication . Monteiro, Alexandra Teles de Lima Ferreira; Bousson, Kouamana; Reis, Ricardo José Nunes dosFixed-wing flying vehicles are usually controlled by means of control surfaces such as elevator, ailerons, and rudder. These surfaces are operated by hydraulic and/or electric actuators. ln case of failure of the control surface systems (i.e., control actuators and coupling devices), the aircraft may suffer damages leading to severe or even fatal crashes. An increasing history of accidents and incidents motivated researchers to investigate the use of propulsion as an emergency flight control and ever since researches on propulsion controlled flying vehicles have gained increased popularity in the last decades, expanding from safety purposes only as investigators realised propulsion control is more flexible than classical control surfaces and propulsion controlled vehicles are prone to highly fast attitude stabilisation and trajectory tracking. Distributed electric propulsion opens even further opportunities for propulsion controlled aircraft, introducing faster response engines with additional thrust capability, granting scale-free integration flexibility and no power lapse as altitude increases. Also, the DEP implementation profits from aero-propulsive coupling benefits, noise reduction with a substantially lower acoustic impact and a positive impact on the environment. Thus, the emergence of the DEP system concept as a control actuator potentiates new capabilities for future aircraft's design, efficiency and robustness, improving the performance of conventional designs, including reducing the traditional control surfaces and decreasing the aircraft's control system vulnerability to engine-out cases. Hence, the present work addresses the issue of robust lateral-directional dynamics control for a propulsion controlled aircraft with parameter uncertainties, aiming to understand how to robustly control an aircraft through its distributed electric propulsion system and how to use this capability to introduce improvements in an aircraft's design. Concretely, the core issue focuses on designing a hybrid robust roll-yaw controller which is able to deal with a standalone propulsion control operation mode as well as a conventional mode, combining, if needed, both propulsion control and control surface operation. The proposed methods are then validated through computational simulation on realistic flight scenarios, namely several levelled coordinated tums and a critical engine failure. Thus, this work shines a light on the distributed electric propulsion technology potential as a control actuator, taking a step towards reducing our environmental footprint in a time where the need for environmentally responsible solutions in aircraft technology is an indisputable concern.