Modeling, Simulation and Control of an Aircraft with Morphing Wing

The technological advances, mainly in the development of new materials, recovered the interest in the application of morphing wings in aircraft. Due to the potential of replacing conventional control surfaces by morphing surfaces, the present work presents the modeling of aerodynamics, dynamics and control design of an aircraft with morphing wings. The morphing concept is given by changing the camber of the trailing edge along the wingspan. For aerodynamics modeling, it was adopted unsteady strip theory and, for dynamics modeling, it was used rigid body mechanics, considering the displacement of the center of mass and the time-varying inertia tensor. Finally, control design is performed using Exponential Mapping Controller (EMC) method. The results showed that, for the adopted variable geometry configuration, the influence of the center of mass displacement and the inertia variation on the aircraft behavior were insignificant, whereas the influences of the unsteady aerodynamics were significant. Consideration of the unsteady aerodynamic effects increases the magnitude of the aircraft movements, necessitating a greater control action.