🤖 AI Summary
Small UAVs suffer severely degraded pitch-axis maneuverability during post-stall flight, limiting agile control and landing capabilities. Method: This paper proposes a bio-inspired morphing-wing-driven hypersonic-maneuver paradigm enabling rapid nose-pointing (RaNPAS) and vertical-wall landing—two canonical post-stall maneuvers. It integrates avian/bat wing-deformation mechanisms into hypersonic control, establishing a morphing-wing guidance strategy based on parametric modulation of the nonlinear longitudinal stability envelope to uncover effective deformation kinematics. Validation employs multibody dynamics modeling, the Goman–Khrabrov dynamic stall model, and a high-fidelity simulation platform. Contribution/Results: Morphing wings actively regulate longitudinal stability, enabling controllable hypersonic maneuvers within transient stall regimes. Compared to conventional UAVs of comparable scale, the proposed approach significantly enhances maneuver response speed, thereby establishing a novel biologically inspired post-stall maneuver modality.
📝 Abstract
Birds and bats are extremely adept flyers: whether in hunting prey, or evading predators, post-stall manoeuvrability is a characteristic of vital importance. Their performance, in this regard, greatly exceeds that of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) of similar scale. Attempts to attain post-stall manoeuvrability, or supermanoeuvrability, in UAVs have typically focused on thrust-vectoring technology. Here we show that biomimetic wing morphing offers an additional pathway to classical supermanoeuvrability, as well as novel forms of bioinspired post-stall manoeuvrability. Using a state-of-the-art flight simulator, equipped with a multibody model of lifting surface motion and a delay differential equation (Goman-Khrabrov) dynamic stall model for all lifting surfaces, we demonstrate the capability of a biomimetic morphing-wing UAV for two post-stall manoeuvres: a classical rapid nose-pointing-and-shooting (RaNPAS) manoeuvre; and a wall landing manoeuvre inspired by biological ballistic transitions. We develop a guidance method for these manoeuvres, based on parametric variation of nonlinear longitudinal stability profiles, which allows efficient exploration of the space of post-stall manoeuvres in these types of UAVs; and yields insight into effective morphing kinematics to enable these manoeuvres. Our results demonstrate the capability of biomimetic morphing, and morphing control of nonlinear longitudinal stability, to enable advanced forms of transient supermanoeuvrability in UAVs.
