Abstract
In autonomous aerial refueling (AAR), the vibration of the flexible refueling hose caused by the receiver aircraft’s excessive closure speed should be suppressed once it appears. This paper proposed an active control strategy based on the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) angular control for the timely and accurate vibration suppression of the flexible refueling hose. A nonsingular fast terminal sliding-mode (NFTSM) control scheme with adaptive extended state observer (AESO) is proposed for PMSM take-up system under multiple disturbances. The states and the “total disturbance” of the PMSM system are firstly reconstituted using the AESO under the uncertainties and measurement noise. Then, a faster sliding variable with tracking error exponential term is proposed together with a special designed reaching law to enhance the global convergence speed and precision of the controller. The proposed control scheme provides a more comprehensive solution to rapidly suppress the flexible refueling hose vibration in AAR. Compared to other methods, the scheme can suppress the flexible hose vibration more fleetly and accurately even when the system is exposed to multiple disturbances and measurement noise. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is competitive in accuracy, global rapidity, and robustness.
Highlights
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) [1, 2] have been widely used in civilian or military fields in recent years, which include but are not limited to target tracking, combat radius increasing, flight range extending, and battle operational efficiency improving
The flexible refueling hose vibration problem during autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) coupling [13], which is the result of excess closure speed caused by the receiver pilot, plays an extremely dangerous role to the AAR safety
To further improve the tracking rapidity and accuracy of the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) take-up system, a nonsingular fast terminal sliding-mode (NFTSM) controller with faster convergence performance is proposed for a class of uncertain nonlinear system with multiple disturbances
Summary
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) [1, 2] have been widely used in civilian or military fields in recent years, which include but are not limited to target tracking, combat radius increasing, flight range extending, and battle operational efficiency improving. The PDR is getting to be a universal refueling equipment due to its low cost and wide operational aspects [11]. The flexible refueling hose vibration problem during autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) coupling [13], which is the result of excess closure speed caused by the receiver pilot, plays an extremely dangerous role to the AAR safety. The refueling coupling flight will fail to latch below the minimum speed, whereas a violent reverberation through the flexible hose (namely, the hose vibration, as shown in Figure 1) can lead to equipment severe damage at a higher closure rate. When the receiver aircraft probe couples the drogue at a higher closure rate, it will definitely cause excessive slack of the refueling flexible hose as the probe pushes the drogue forward. The internal hose tension will rapidly decrease, and the International Journal of Aerospace Engineering
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