Design Gust Alleviation Controller for Highly Flexible Solar UAV

The structure of the wing of High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is highly flexible, it's oscillation is obvious and coupled with the flight dynamic responses of the UAV, this influent the flight security seriously. In the stage of conceptual design of a solar UAV, in order to estimate the scheme rapidly and accurately, it is necessary to consider the dynamic performance of the flexible UAV in the gust disturbance. In this paper, the Lagrangian method is employed to model the motion of flexible UAV and the bending of the wing together, the optimal static output feedback (SOF) controller is designed for the gust load alleviation, aiming at the characteristics of the highly flexible UAV that the elastic oscillation of the wing is obvious while suffering gust, the angle of attack of the UAV and the Wing deformation are considered to be restrain together. The results of simulation show that, while the highly flexible UAV suffers gust, the SOF controller can restrains the oscillation of angle of attack and the deformation of the wing, and the maximum displacement of the tip of the wing is reduced by 33%.