H ∞ attitude control with initiative morphing strategy based on linearization for gull-wings

Morphing is usually designed to adapt the structure properties to different missions, while in this paper, it is also a method of flight control of the aircrafts. With morphing aircrafts taken as bodies with variable center of mass and inertia tensor, the centroid dynamic equations are analyzed to build the nonlinear dynamic model, which are then simplified for gull-wings with folding angles as the morphing parameters. For the purpose of further analysis and controller design, the nonlinear equations are linearized based on perturbation approach. The H ∞ synthesis is introduced to develop the attitude tracking controller. The proposed approach is validated by the nonlinear simulations, which show that the initiative morphing strategy works well and will improve the robustness of the system.