Integrated flight/propulsion optimal control for DPC aircraft based on the GA-RPS algorithm

Abstract

The new distributed propulsion configuration (DPC) can effectively improve fuel efficiency and reduce pollution, but also brings in special cross-coupling effects between the flight and propulsion systems. To tackle this problem, integrated flight/propulsion modeling and optimal control of DPC with boundary layer ingestion (BLI) and supercirculation features are systematically investigated. As the basis, by taking the inherent BLI and supercirculation features into consideration, an integrated flight/propulsion model of SAX-40 is built to reflect the actual complex engine-aircraft coupling effects. Then an integrated flight/propulsion optimal control scheme is proposed to deal with the strong coupling effects and to implement the comprehensive control of redundant control surfaces as well as the distributed engines. Under this scheme, a detailed description of the optimal control problem is presented, and a novel two-stage optimization algorithm named genetic algorithm-random pattern search (GA-RPS) is proposed to solve this complex optimal problem. By the new strategies of “parallel genetic algorithm computing in sub-regions” and “random pattern search” in the GA-RPS algorithm, the optimization accuracy and convergence speed are effectively improved. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the GA-RPS algorithm and the significant performance improvement to DPC by optimization.

Keywords

Distributed propulsion configuration integrated flight/propulsion control optimization

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