A study on a multi-controller design of the drawtube for aerial boom refueling

Compared with hose and drogue-type refueling, aerial boom refueling has many obvious advantages; these include rapid refueling, insensitivity to atmospheric turbulence, and simple manipulation. The design scheme of a hardware-in-the-loop simulation test platform for aerial boom refueling is presented. The simulation test platform, especially the boom, is drawn by CATIA software. The mathematic model of the drawtube is established where the aerodynamic parameters are obtained by CFD method. The mulit-controller is designed, there being two phases of operation. Just before the docking period an LQR controller is adopted so that the position and attitude can be manipulated accurately. At the docking moment, in order to eliminate the great docking stress brought about by the change of receiver position and the disturbance of air flow, an LMI robust controller is used. The simulation results show that the control method is feasible.