Adaptive control of a nonlinear prototypical wing section with reduced order observer

This paper treats the question of control of an aeroelastic system with unk nown parameters using output feedback. The equations of motion of the chose n aeroelastic system describe the plunge and pitch motion of a wing. A sing le trailing edge flap is used for the purpose of control, and plunge displa cement and pitch angle are measured for feedback. Using a canonical represe ntation of the aeroelastic system, reduced order filters are designed to ob tain the unmeasured state variables. Then based on a backstepping design te chnique, adaptive control laws for the trajectory control of the pitch angl e and the plunge displacement are derived. In the closed-loop system, the s tate vector is shown to converge asymptotically to zero. Simulation results are presented which show that regulation and trajectory following are acco mplished in the closed-loop system in spite of large uncertainties in the s tructural and aerodynamic parameters of the model.