Flight Dynamics, Control Law Design, and Flight Tests of Kite

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-2462.vid This paper presents flight dynamics modeling, control law design, and flight tests of a tailless kite configuration. The main objective of the paper is to verify and validate the flight dynamics modeling and control design for stability augmentation system (SAS) with the flight tests. The flight dynamics model is developed using Lagrange formulations. Static analysis is conducted to calculate a stable bridle point location and angle of attack. The flight dynamics analysis is conducted about that point. From the dynamic analysis, it is observed that the yaw mode of the kite is unstable. So, a single input single output (SISO) based controller was designed and tested in an actual flight test. On board IMU sensor and the load cell data were used to collect the flight test data. The flight test data is used to calculate the flight angle of attack, lift, and drag forces. Next, system identification studies were conducted using output only data for estimating the flight test rigid body natural frequencies and damping ratios. The flight test identified modes are found to be in good agreement with those obtained from the flight dynamics model.