Browsing by Author "Hugo, Gideon"
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- ItemAutonomous landing of a fixed-Wing unmanned aircraft with partialwing and stabiliser losses(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03) Hugo, Gideon; Engelbrecht, H. A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis presents the design, implementation and verification of an autonomous landing system for a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle that is able to land the aircraft after suffering partial wing loss and partial losses of the horizontal and vertical stabilisers. A fault-tolerant flight control system is designed, which ensures that the inner-loop controllers remain stable and within acceptable transient response specifications when the aircraft suffers partial wing, horizontal stabiliser, and vertical stabiliser losses. The design approach is to find controller gains that provide the best performance for the undamaged aircraft, while still providing at least the minimum acceptable performance over all damage cases. An algorithm calculates the controller gains, if such gains exist, with different combinations of natural frequencies and damping ratios for all damage cases until both the desired closed-loop performance and robustness are obtained. Autonomous landing is accomplished using a state machine that guides the aircraft through the landing phases. The flight control laws, waypoint navigation, and autonomous landing system were verified in simulation and with practical flight tests. Landing accuracies within a 1.5 m radius circle are accomplished in simulation for an aircraft with 20% wing loss, 70% horizontal stabiliser loss, and 20% vertical stabiliser loss.