Nonlinear controllers for wing morphing trajectories of a heave dynamics model

A multiple component structure consisting of two Euler-Bernoulli beams connected to a rigid mass is used to model the heave dynamics of an aeroelastic wing micro air vehicle that is acted upon by a nonlinear aerodynamic lift force. In this work we consider two different strategies for designing nonlinear controllers that achieve specified wing morphing trajectories, namely (a) linearization followed by linear quadratic tracking and (b) a feedback linearization inner loop with sliding mode outer loop. We seek to analyze the relative performance of the two controllers as we note the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.