Reinforcement Learning for Flight Control: Evaluating Handling Qualities and Stability Properties of the PH-LAB

Reinforcement Learning applied to flight control has shown to have several benefits over classical, linear flight controllers, as it eliminates the need for gain scheduling and it could provide fault-tolerance. The application to civil aviation in practice, however, is non-existent as there are multiple safety concerns. This research...

Piloted simulator evaluation of low speed handling qualities of the Flying-V

The Flying-V novel aircraft design aims at reducing fuel consumption by an innovative low-drag, fuselage-free geometry. However, possible issues related to certification requirements have been noted regarding longitudinal handling qualities at low speed, the pull-up manoeuver, and the flight path angle response. This study aims at investigating...

Piloted Assessment of the Lateral-Directional Handling Qualities of the Flying-V

Flying wings are known for their limited lateral-directional stability and handling qualities. This study aims at assessing the lateral-directional handling qualities of a conceptual flying wing aircraft currently in development at TU Delft, the Flying-V. It focuses on two aspects: First assess the lateral-directional handling qualities of the...

Modelling, Control, and Handling Quality Analysis of the Flying-V

Over the last five decades, the majority of commercial aircraft consisted of the traditional tube-and-wing configuration. This traditional configuration is approaching a fuel efficiency asymptote. Besides that, with the increasing number of passengers and cargo transported by air every year, and environmental impact as an important factor in...

Model Predictive Control for Helicopter Flight Control: Evaluating Linear and Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Reducing Cross-coupling Effects in Helicopter Flight

Model predictive control is an optimal, model-based control method that has the powerful capability of directly including input and output constraints. Next to this, it is known that helicopters are hard to fly with its complex, unstable and highly coupled dynamics. With the introduction of the concept of handling qualities, guidelines for...

Adaptive Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion for Consistent Pitch Rate Control

Control augmentation systems based on Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) are able to provide high-performance nonlinear control without the need for a model of the complete system. Considering a pitch rate control law for a fixed-wing aircraft, only a model for the elevator control effectiveness (CE) and sensor feedback of the pitch...