An Anti-Disturbance Coordinated Attitude Control Method for Morphing Aircraft Based on Control Allocation

This paper presents an anti-disturbance coordinated attitude control method for morphing aircraft (MA) based on control allocation. Focusing on the MA with variable wingspan and sweep angle, the attitude-control-oriented model in strict feedback form is established. The morphing effect is characterized in the aerodynamic moments, the disturbances, and the nonlinear flight dynamics. Corresponding to different treatments of the morphing effect, the proposed anti-disturbance attitude coordinated control scheme consists of the moment controller and the control allocator. For the moment controller, a backstepping control method is adopted and the sliding mode observers (SMO) are connected to handle the disturbance terms. The latter allocator is constructed by solving a nonlinear programming (NP) problem, in which the actuator-effectiveness matrix maps the virtual attitude moments of the controller to the extended actuator vector and enables the involvement of active morphing in attitude control. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme and the benefits achieved through morphing.