Coupling Dynamics and Three-Dimensional Trajectory Optimization of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Propelled by Electroaerodynamic Thrusters

Bibliographic Details
Title: Coupling Dynamics and Three-Dimensional Trajectory Optimization of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Propelled by Electroaerodynamic Thrusters
Authors: Tong Lin, Mingying Huo, Naiming Qi, Jianfeng Wang, Tianchen Wang, Haopeng Gu, Yiming Zhang
Source: Aerospace, Vol 10, Iss 11, p 950 (2023)
Publisher Information: MDPI AG, 2023.
Publication Year: 2023
Collection: LCC:Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
Subject Terms: unmanned aerial vehicle, solid-state propulsion, electroaerodynamics, trajectory optimization, Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics, TL1-4050
More Details: Electroaerodynamic unmanned aerial vehicles (EAD-UAVs) are innovative UAVs that use high-voltage asymmetric electrodes to ionize air molecules and Coulomb force to push these ions to produce thrust. Unlike fixed-wing and rotor UAVs, EAD-UAVs contain no moving surfaces and have the advantages of very low noise, low mechanical fatigue, and no carbon emissions. This paper proposes an EAD-UAV configuration with an orthogonal arrangement of multiple EAD thrusters to adjust the EAD-UAV attitude and flight trajectory through voltage distribution control alone. Based on a one-dimensional dynamic model of an EAD thruster, the attitude–path coupling dynamics of the EAD-UAV were derived. To achieve EAD-UAV flight control for a specified target, the Bezier shaping approach (BSA) was implemented to realize rapid trajectory optimization considering the coupling dynamic constraints. The numerical simulation results indicate that the BSA can quickly procure an optimized flight trajectory that satisfies the dynamic and boundary constraints. Compared with the Gaussian pseudospectral method (GPM), the BSA changes the optimization index of the objective function by nearly 1.14% but demands only nearly 1.95% of the computational time on average. Hence, the improved integrative Bezier shaping approach (IBSA) can overcome the poor convergence issue of the BSA under the continuous acceleration constraint of multi-target flight trajectories.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 2226-4310
Relation: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/10/11/950; https://doaj.org/toc/2226-4310
DOI: 10.3390/aerospace10110950
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/9c8b5f8f85bb4d1298ddc9eb38720346
Accession Number: edsdoj.9c8b5f8f85bb4d1298ddc9eb38720346
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
More Details
ISSN:22264310
DOI:10.3390/aerospace10110950
Published in:Aerospace
Language:English