Modeling and LQR switch control of morphing aircraft

The morphing aircraft can change structural shape during flight, which causes nonlinear aerodynamic forces, moments, and nonlinear initial forces, moments. The multi-body model is built based on the assumption of the particles system. The morphing aircraft is described as a linear switched system during the structural shape change and contains many linear subsystems. Each subsystem controller is designed based on the optimal control LQR method and the switch happens among the adjacent controllers according to the switching law determined by the shape change of morphing aircraft. A sufficient condition is deduced by using the common Lyapunov function method, and it guarantees uniform boundedness of the closed-loop switched system within the whole shape change range. Finally, the morphing aircraft Fire-Bee is chosen to validate the method. Simulation results show that the closed-loop switched control system performs well both in linear modeling and nonlinear modeling.