Control of ducted fan aircraft using redundant effectors

Controllability and stability of ducted fan air vehicles is a challenging problem due to their complex nonlinear aerodynamics and dynamic behavior. At the same time, the combination of vanes and rotor pitch controls can provide unique control characteristics for these vehicles. A dynamic inversion controller is designed for a tandem ducted fan air vehicle to achieve desired response characteristics across the flight envelope. The controller includes an inner loop that controls the attitude and an outer loop that controls translational motion. In this study, it is desired for the vehicle to perform translational maneuvers with minimum pitch and roll angles. This is obtained by modifying the control mixing and the model inversion controller to use a combination of cyclic pitch and vanes to generate a lateral or longitudinal propulsive force. Simulation results of the controller show that the use of vanes decreased the pitch and roll angles considerably for lateral and longitudinal translation maneuvers.