Dynamics and Control of a Ground Effect Transportation System

An aerodynamic property of lifting bodies called "ground effect", is used in the design of vehicles for a futuristic transportation system. Fundamental design issues associated with such a vehicle are discussed from first principles with a special emphasis on dynamics and control. Mathematical models of the dynamics of such a vehicle are presented and the inherent stability of the concept is evaluated through simulations. The desired self-stabilizing effect is shown to be weak when simple ground effect models are used. However, the complex analytical and numerical models for the extreme ground effect case discussed in the literature, offer optimism and form a basis for this self stabilization based vehicle design. Subsequent steps present a control surface selection and design process with a naive approach. A nonlinear adaptive state feedback control law for tracking of the position and velocity states of the model and regulation of the attitude of the vehicle in the presence of parametric uncertainty and external disturbances is utilized to obtain worst case control magnitudes. Design and dimensioning of control surfaces is done based on these control computations.