LPV Model-based Adaptive MPC of an eVTOL Aircraft During Tilt Transition Subject to Motor Failure

This paper applies novel LPV (linear parameter-varying) model and MPC (model predictive control) methods to a tilt-transition process with rotor failure for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft of six distributed electric rotors with a fixed-wing for level flight, where two rotors are tiltable to generate variable thrust vector during the tilt-transition from hovering to steady-state level flight and the rest of four cannot be tilted. During the level flight, the aerodynamic lift induced by fixed wing maintains flight altitude. Based on a predefined nominal tilting trajectory scheduled by tilt-rotor angular position and the failed rotor speed, a discrete-time LPV model is constructed based on significantly reduced number of linear time invariant models obtained by linearizing the nonlinear eVTOL aircraft model along the tilting trajectory, where tilt-rotor angle and failed rotor speed can be measured in real-time. An LPV modeling error evaluation method is proposed based on the sigma shifted H-2 norm, and adaptive model predictive controller is designed with the dynamic reference compensation. Simulation study indicated the success of the adaptive MPC strategy based on tilt-transition LPV model with rotor failure.

Automated summary

This paper applies novel LPV (linear parameter-varying) model and MPC (model predictive control) methods to a tilt-transition process with rotor failure for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. An LPV model is constructed based on a predefined tilting trajectory and a significantly reduced number of linear time invariant models obtained by linearizing the nonlinear eVTOL aircraft model. An adaptive model predictive controller is designed based on the LPV model for successful tilt-transition control with rotor failure.