Simulation of the Transition Phase for an Optimally-Controlled Tethered VTOL Rigid Aircraft for Airborne Wind Energy Generation
Published in AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) Conference, 2020
Recommended citation: Rushdi, M., Hussein, A., Dief, T. N., Yoshida, S., & Schmehl, R. (2020). Simulation of the transition phase for an optimally-controlled tethered vtol rigid aircraft for airbornewind energy generation. In AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum (p. 1243).
In this paper, we formulate the Transition phase (for an AWE VTOL aircraft) as an optimal control problem, so as to determine the optimal control inputs which constitute the control surface deflections and the thrust force; which steers the aircraft from hovering with its nose upwards to forward flight. Subsequently, we simulate the trajectory for two cases of optimality; (a) minimizing the power consumption and (b) minimizing the endurance, during this phase.
Recommended citation: Rushdi, M., Hussein, A., Dief, T. N., Yoshida, S., & Schmehl, R. (2020). Simulation of the transition phase for an optimally-controlled tethered vtol rigid aircraft for airbornewind energy generation. In AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum (p. 1243).