Master's Thesis: Flight Control Law Development and Testing for a Tilt-Wing eVTOL UAV

What to expect

At the Institute of Flight Systems, we develop new flight control methods for unconventional aircraft configurations. A focus area of our research is transformational aircraft, which are characterized by a large flight envelope, a high degree of overactuation, and a complex transition maneuver between hover and cruise flight states. While historical aircraft concepts suffered especially from poor flight and handling qualities, today’s level of automation and control augmentation allows for a seamless control and simplified vehicle operations, as well as easy integrations of higher-level functions. As these control functions are experimental and the flight dynamic models used for the validation cannot cover all (aero)dynamic phenomena occurring in the real world, it is indispensable to test these functions in flight tests on subscale demonstrators.
Your task is to build on previous flight dynamics and control research for tilt-wing aircraft and transfer and implement novel flight control functions on a new subscale demonstrator configuration. After familiarizing with the flight dynamics and implementing a suitable flight control law, thorough testing and clearance needs to be done. Then, the preparations for the flight tests, where both the on-hardware implementation and in-the-loop tests take place. If time allows, you will also support us with upcoming flight test campaigns and help us with any work that arises there.

Your tasks

• Literature research (VTOL flight control, flight testing)
• Familiarizing and analyzing the flight dynamics of the new configuration
• Implementation of a flight control law for this configuration
• Testing, validating and verifying the implemented control law
• Building up a workflow for flight control implementation and testing on the subscale demonstrator
• Test of the resulting setup (using HIL)
• Accompany flight testing
• Documentation of the workflow and results

Your profile

• Above average enrolled master student in aerospace engineering or similar
• Good knowledge in Matlab/Simulink and Python
• Good knowledge in flight mechanics and dynamics
• Good knowledge in control theory and flight control
• Knowledge on nonlinear (flight) control methods and concepts
• Preferably initial knowledge on eVTOLs
• Preferably hands-on knowledge with flight hardware and flight testing
• Independent, autonomous work approach
• Interest to work scientifically