Design of Tiltrotor Flight Control System Using Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control

Tiltrotor can flight both airplane mode and helicopter mode by changing the propulsion thrust vector via angle of nacelle. Therefore tiltrotor has performance of vertical and short take-off and land (V/STOL), multi-purpose aircraft with excellent high-speed cruise. However, it is very difficult to design the flight control system because of the effect of model parameter variation and external disturbances. First the model of the tiltrotor is given, and then the method of sliding mode control is present to design the flight control system. To avoid the chattering phenomenon in sliding mode control, the method of fuzzy sliding mode control is applied, which incorporates sliding mode control with the fuzzy control. Finally the flight control system is simulated and the simulation results show that the flight control system has strong robustness and excellent dynamic characteristics.