Steady fuel transfer control of receiving aircraft considering time-varying inertia moment and environmental disturbance

考虑时变转动惯量与环境扰动的受油机平稳输油控制

¹ School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China
² School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China

Received: 28 August 2024

Abstract

To address the issue of sustained attitude stability during the fuel transfer phase of aerial refueling, considering the impacts of time-varying rotational inertia and environmental disturbances, a rapid robust control method for the receiving aircraft is proposed. This method ensures quick convergence of the control system after disturbances. For the attitude dynamics model of the receiving aircraft, uncertainties such as fuel input, tanker wake, and atmospheric turbulence are introduced to establish a time-varying rotational inertia attitude model oriented towards control. Considering the control objective of maintaining long-term attitude stability of the receiving aircraft, an error robust integral technique is employed to establish a fast-converging control law, enhancing the system's robustness against uncertainties and external disturbances, ensuring the smooth completion of the fuel transfer task. The stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed based on Lyapunov theory, proving the boundedness of the tracking error signal. The digital simulation results of the comparison of three control algorithms show that under the influence of external disturbances such as atmospheric gusts, turbulence, and tanker wake, the proposed robust control method can ensure that the attitude system of the receiving aircraft with dynamic uncertainty and time-varying moment of inertia converges quickly to the equilibrium position after being disturbed, effectively improving the stability of the fuel transfer process.

摘要

针对空中加油的输油段持续姿态稳定问题, 考虑时变转动惯量和环境扰动等影响因素, 提出了受油机的快速鲁棒控制方法, 保证控制系统受扰后快速收敛。针对受油机姿态动力学模型, 引入燃油输送、加油机尾流、大气紊流等不确定干扰, 建立面向控制的时变转动惯量姿态模型。考虑受油机长时间姿态保持的控制目标, 采用误差鲁棒积分技术建立快速收敛控制律, 提升系统不确定和外界扰动的鲁棒能力, 保证输油任务平稳完成。基于Lyapunov理论进行闭环系统的稳定性分析, 证明了跟踪误差信号的有界性。3种控制算法对比和蒙特卡洛测试的数字仿真结果表明, 在大气突风、紊流、加油机尾流等外界干扰作用下, 所提出的鲁棒控制方法能够保证存在动力学不确定与时变转动惯量的受油机姿态系统受扰后快速收敛至平衡位置, 有效提升输油过程的稳定能力。