Modelling and robust control of fluidic thrust vectoring and circulation control for unmanned air vehicles.

This paper presents actuator models for fluidic thrust vectoring and circulation control and they are used in the design of a robust controller for an unmanned air vehicle. The pitching and rolling moments for the aircraft are produced through the use of a co-flow fluidic thrust vectoring arrangement at the wing trailing edges. Experimental results for the co-flow actuators are used to derive mathematical models and their performance is compared with conventional control surfaces. For the controller design, nonlinear dynamic models are approximated by a simplified linear parameter varying (LPV) model. The polytopic nature of the controller is exploited to reformulate the LPV controller design problem into a m-synthesis problem. The LPV controllers exhibit superior stability properties over the entire operating region, when compared to conventional gain-scheduling schemes.