String stability of energy-saving aircraft formations
| Autor: | Riehl, James R., Hufstedler, Esteban A. L., Chatelain, Philippe, Hendrickx, Julien M. |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: | |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| Popis: | Groups of aircraft have the potential to save significant amounts of energy by flying in formations; all but the leading aircraft can benefit from the upwash of the wakes of preceding aircraft. A potential obstacle as the number of aircraft in such a formation increases is that disturbances at one aircraft, for example caused by turbulence or wake meandering, can propagate and grow as each following aircraft tries to track the optimal energy-saving position relative to the one in front. This phenomenon, known as string instability, has not yet been adequately examined in the context of aircraft formations. We discuss some trade-offs involved in designing string stable controllers whose objective is to minimize energy, and present a control design method to achieve both string stability and energy efficiency of an aircraft formation. In simulations of a 10-aircraft linear formation in the presence of 2% turbulence intensity, our controller achieves string stability while reduced energy consumption by an average of 13% with respect to solo flight. Comment: 27 pages, 14 figures, 17 figure files |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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