Aircraft electric anti-skid braking and combined direction control system using co-simulation and experimental methods

Abstract

The work reported in this paper concentrates on the design and application of an electric ground control system combining the braking and steering mechanisms on a small unmanned aerial vehicle. A virtual prototype of a small unmanned aerial vehicle is built with a multibody dynamic software LMS Virtual.Lab Motion. An electric anti-skid braking system and a new combined direction control system considering the sensors models are established with MATLAB/Simulink. Optimizations are carried out using a global optimization command patternsearch first and then a local optimization method fminsearch for fine-tuning to design the dynamic allocation for the direction rectifying weight coefficients. Then a co-simulation method is introduced to study the ground maneuver performance so as to investigate the interaction of each subsystem via the interfaces between the two softwares. The anti-skid braking simulation verifies that the aircraft can stop smoothly and efficiently. The combined rectification control simulations in three different conditions verify the system stability and robustness. In addition, an anti-skid braking and a direction-control experiment are conducted. Results show that the experimental results fit well with the simulation and that the yaw angle can be corrected effectively under the designed control systems.