A fractional derivative aerodynamic model at high angles of attack

Abstract

A fractional derivative aerodynamic model is put forward based on Grünwald-Letnikov fractional derivative in this paper. In order to express the hysteresis property of aerodynamic coefficients, a fractional derivative state-space equation is developed from Goman’s differential equation. A fast and high-accuracy calculation method of Grünwald-Letnikov fractional derivative is proposed. Then, the model is demonstrated by several experiments data from literatures. The simulation results show that the presented fractional derivative aerodynamic model can preferably express the nonlinear unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of airfoils and aircrafts. The proposed modelling framework is meaningful to the designation of flight and control system.