Wind and Wind Shear Impact On Recovery

Highlights: 

• The investigation of wind and wind shear impacts on spin recovery profiles, where both altitude loss and spin recovery time are reduced. 

• The analysis of how wind direction impacts spin recovery reveals that wind from any direction, a headwind, a tailwind, or a crosswind, decreases recovery altitude. 

• It was found that the aircraft tends to drift in the direction of the wind when it is recovering .

Vector Thrust Control Based Recovery

Highlights:

• Vertical thrust based spin recovery system is developed.

• Vertical thrust based effective flat-spin recovery is achieved which restricts the altitude loss.

Strategic Thrust Vector Control Based Recovery

Highlights:

• Thrust Vector Control command is designed as a function of angle-of-attack in pitch and yaw direction and strategically has been used with aircraft primary controls.

• Recovery altitude and spin recovery time is minimized by strategic use of Thrust Vectoring.

Recovery Using Optimally Deflected Deployable Fin

Highlights:

• Aircraft spin recovery is achieved using optimally deflected fin.

• Altitude loss and spin recovery time are minimized using optimally deflected deployable fin.

Decoupled INDI Control for Aircraft Autonomous Landing with Ground-Effect

Highlights:

• The decoupled INDI controller has been designed for autonomous landing. 

• The control approach of INDI is applied to an aircraft called the Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) unmanned aircraft. •

•  A parametric path-following algorithm known as the carrot-chasing algorithm with a navigation filter is designed and implemented for waypoint navigation for autonomous landing. 

• With ground and wind effect also, the designed approach and flare trajectory were successfully followed by the proposed controller for autonomous landing. 

Automatic Landing for Alternate Profiles

Highlights:

• Different autonomous landing profiles are formulated and simulated. 

• Generic landing is modelled first, wherein, approach and acquired runway heading is considered as same. The second landing profile involves altitude hold when runway is not clear to land the aircraft. 

• Expedited landing is the third profile modeled with a glide-slope-maintained descent to reduce the ground distance required pre touchdown. In either of the landing profiles, flare is kept same. 

• The merits and demerits with respect to the practicality of implementation of these profiles are then discussed. 

• Each landing profile has been demonstrated using sliding mode controller.

Sliding-Mode Control Based Optimal Energy Utilization 

Highlights:

• Energy optimal dynamic attitude for a solar powered aircraft is determined and implemented using the sliding-mode approach. 

• A nonlinear constrained optimization technique has been considered to determine the optimal attitude of the aircraft for given a geographical location, solar position, heading direction, and other flight conditions for clear sky conditions.

• Solar unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Maraal, is considered to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach.

Flight Control for Novel Control Surface "Auxiron" 

Highlights:

• For achieving zero sideslip, sliding mode based flight control law design. 

• The controller is able to  fly  the aircraft in a straight line, even at a non zero bank angle.

• To demonstrate the proposed approach, aircraft parameters of the solar unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Maraal, is considered.

Mid-Air Launch Technique for Parasite Aircraft  

Highlights:

• The parasite aircraft is positioned underneath and on top of the carrier aircraft in the first scenario and the second scenario.

•  The novel aspect of this work is the separation approach given, in which each situation is mathematically characterized and the needed separation distance is computed. 

• A series of simulations demonstrate the separation technique's efficacy and promise that the current work may be implemented. 

Thrust-Assisted UAV Launch   

Highlights:

• A genialized flight dynamic model for thrust assisted UAV lunch is developed.

• Analytical solution for thrust angle setting with flight path angle to zero out the rate of change of flight path angle is found out. 

• A set of simulations demonstrate the efficacy of proposed work.