Non-Certainty-Equivalent Adaptive Control of a Nonlinear Aeroelastic System

The development of a non-certainty-equivalent adaptive control system for the control of a nonlinear aeroelastic system is the subject of this paper. The prototypical aeroelastic wing section considered here includes structural nonlinearity and a single control surface for the purpose of control. Its dynamical model has two-degree-of-freedom and describes the plunge and pitch motion. It is assumed that the model parameters (except the sign of one of the control input coefficients) are not known. The uncontrolled aeroelastic model exhibits limit cycle oscillation beyond a critical free-stream velocity. Based on the attractive manifold, and the immersion and invariance methodologies, a non-certainty-equivalent adaptive state variable feedback control law for the trajectory tracking of the pitch angle is derived. Using the Lyapunov analysis, asymptotic convergence of the state variables to the origin is established. It is shown that the trajectory of the system converges to a manifold. The special feature of the designed control system is that the closed-loop system asymptotically recovers the performance of a deterministic controller. This cannot happen if certainty-equivalent adaptive controllers are used. Simulation results are presented which show that the control system suppresses the oscillatory responses of the system in the presence of large parameter uncertainties. Keywords—Aeroelastic wing, adaptive flutter control, nonlinear system, immersion and invariance method, uncertain system.