To reduce the environmental impact of aircraft, technological innovations are required. The Flying-V could be one of these technical innovations, as research shows it could be up to 20 % more efficient than regular aircraft of the same size. The Flying-V however has low lateral c
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To reduce the environmental impact of aircraft, technological innovations are required. The Flying-V could be one of these technical innovations, as research shows it could be up to 20 % more efficient than regular aircraft of the same size. The Flying-V however has low lateral control authority, and pitch
break-up could occur for high angles of attack.
The goal of this research is to increase the maturity of the Flight Control System of the Flying-V. To do so, a Flight Control Systems (FCS) is proposed with Flight Envelope Protection, which is based on an Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion inner loop control law. For longitudinal control, a 6* control law was implemented, and for lateral control, a Rate Control Attitude Hold control law. To test the performance of this controller, the handling qualities of this FCS were determined in the presence of sensor dynamics, as well as discretization effects. The controller is able to be tuned within level 1 handling qualities at selected design conditions, as long as the time delay of the angular rate sensors
is no more than 0.04 seconds.
The effect of sampling time and aerodynamic uncertainties were also evaluated for cruise conditions, and it was shown that the controller is robust for changes in the aerodynamic model, as well as being statically stable for sampling times lower than 0.1 seconds. Finally, the Flight Envelope Protection laws were tested, and shown to meet the requirements, for the cases that were tested, setting a step in maturity for the Flight Control System