Powered Yaw Control for Distributed Electric Propulsion Aircraft: A Model Predictive Control Approach

Distributed electric propulsion (DEP) aircraft allows additional control authority over the yaw moment made possible by active differential thrust. This gives rise to the concept of powered yaw control. A critical issue when considering powered yaw control is to optimally dispatch thrust among multiple electric propulsors. To address this issue, this article proposes a hierarchical model predictive control (MPC) scheme for the powered yaw control of DEP aircraft. This scheme has a two-layer structure. Based on the linearized flight dynamics model and approximate electric propulsor dynamics, an upper layer MPC controller computes the optimal thrust command for each electric propulsor. The dispatched thrust commands are then sent to the lower layer electric propulsor MPC controllers for execution. The salient feature of this scheme is that, by incorporating the electric propulsor dynamics into the DEP aircraft flight dynamic model, it achieves the objective of dynamically optimal powered yaw control. Furthermore, by using approximate electric propulsor dynamics in the upper layer and accurate electric propulsor dynamics in the lower layer, it leads to a satisfied balance between control performance and computational complexity. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.