Active Control of a Morphing Wing Aircraft and Failure Analysis for System Reliability

Abstract

A morphing wing aircraft has the ability to increase the efficiency of an aircraft by better optimizing lift and drag characteristics during a flight. A morphing wing UAV was designed and constructed by AFRL/RQVS and required a means of control and method of characterizing the performance of the aircraft through flight testing. This research presents the design and construction of a control system capable of adjusting the morphing wing shape based on pilot commands and current flight status. The control system was tested and improved following a flight test crash utilizing failure mode analysis.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 21, 2019
Accession Number
AD1076586

Entities

People

  • Madison J. Montgomery

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aerodynamic Configurations
  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Aircraft Wings
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Control Surfaces
  • Control Systems
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Equations Of Motion
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Flight Testing
  • Frequency Domain
  • Governments
  • Low Pass Filters
  • Morphing Wings
  • Operating Systems
  • Power Supplies
  • Reliability
  • United States Government
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.