Active flow vector flight control for a fixed-wing UAV with Synthetic Jet

This paper provides a new flight control method which adopts thrust vector control only using the synthetic jet for a fixing-wing unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV). The pitching control of this fixed-wing UAV is controlled only by the thrust vector produced by the synthetic jet installed at the outside of the engine jet mouth. Firstly, we rebuild the fluid model of the engine with synthetic jet, and we obtain the relationship between the deflection angle of primary jet with the amplitude of metal diaphragm of the synthetic jet. Then we design an adaptive backstepping sliding mode control for the pure pitching motion of the UAV. Simulations are conducted in order to analyze the controller and compare the thrust vectoring control (TVC) method with traditional aerodynamic elevator. Finally, we find out that the thrust vectoring control produced by synthetic jet can realize the pure pitching control of the UAV, and the TVC method can replace the traditional aerodynamic elevator. The adaptive backstepping sliding mode controller performs well in the presence of the dynamic uncertainties and external disturbance.