Dynamic Modelling and Control Design of a Tandem Tilt-Wing eVTOL Vehicle

Kurzfassung

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) promises an economic and ecological solution for the growing mobility demand, standing at the forefront of a transformative era in transportation, driven by innovative technologies such as Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) vehicles. Although tandem tilt-wing systems offer the most flexibility, its advantages are paired with the drawback of both mechanical and flight control systems complexity. Therefore, the purpose of the current project is to explore the design of a flight controller for a tandem tilt-wing eVTOL (Airbus A3 Vahana) in the cruise condition. Using a complete six-degree-of-freedom rigid body model, the controller for the cruise condition is designed using an Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) approach combined with a control allocation algorithm with Kernel restoring, which provided fault-tolerant capabilities due to the over-actuated nature of the system. Several linear controller and reference models were designed for the outer loop. It was verified that both the inner loop and the outer loops commands were being properly followed by the aircraft. Additionally, the response of the controller when subjected to a motor failure also demonstrated to retain the full controllability of the aircraft.