Rolling active control for an aircraft of seamless aeroelastic wing

This paper presents an investigation into the controllability for an aircraft of seamless aeroelastic wing. The research is aimed at the design of control laws for the aircraft rolling by actively operating a pair of an unconventional hingeless flexible leading and trailing control surfaces at different flight speed. The main challenge is how to achieve a specified rolling rate for the aircraft when the control effectiveness drops down and even crosses over the rolling reversal point within the flight envelope. This phenomenon is mainly due to the aeroelastic effect of the large sweptback and highly flexible wing design for weight saving. The investigation shows that control laws varying with the flight speed can be designed to achieve the rolling control target.