Development of a One Axis Thrust Vectoring Control System Demonstrator with Electric Ducted Fan

Thrust Vectoring Control (TVC) becomes a solution for a condition that needs sophisticated control since it has faster responses and it is robust to the flight environment, compared to conventional aerodynamic control. As the development of this technology takes a lot of experiments and may cost a lot, hardware in the loop simulator, or a demonstrator, can help in the learning and the development process. This research purpose is to design and build an indoor TVC demonstrator, using Electric Ducted Fan (EDF) as the thruster, that is capable of simulating the thrust control of a flight vehicle with high maneuverability, such as a launch vehicle (LV). The system is limited with only one degree of freedom, the pitch rotational axis, to be focused more on the demonstrator hardware and control requirements. A Flight Controller (FC) is used as the control mechanism to stabilize pitch attitude. The demonstrator is then built and tested, and capable to stabilize itself to a certain extent using a PID control algorithm. Several steady-state oscillations, however, are observed possibly due to the CG offset. This result indicates the need to improve the hardware design. Nevertheless, the demonstrator provides a decent foundation for future research on TVC.