Design of Flight Control System for a Small Unmanned Tilt Rotor Aircraft

A tilt rotor is an aircraft of a special kind, which possesses the characteristics of a helicopter and a fixed-wing airplane. However, there are a great number of important technical problems waiting for settlements. Of them, the flight control system might be a critical one. This article presents the progresses of the research work on the design of flight control system at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA). The flight control law of the tilt rotor aircraft is designed with the help of an inner/outer loop control structure and an eigenstructure assignment algorithm on the basis of a proper mathematical model already verified by the wind tunnel tests. The proposed control law has been born out through the construction of the flight control system and the flight tests. Now, the flight tests are still underway on a prototype of small unmanned tilt rotor aircraft. The results have evidenced the credibility of the aircraft design and the effectiveness of the flight control system for the tilt rotor working in the helicopter mode. A full envelope flight test is planned to carry out further researches on the flight control law.