Adaptive Backstepping Control for the Longitudinal Flight of a Blended Wing Body Aircraft

In recent years, many companies and research groups have been developing the design and control of Blended Wing Body aircraft. Although commercial flights are unavailable today, the first flight is expected in the upcoming years. The Blended Wing Body configuration incorporates many advantages in security, maneuverability, fuel economy, and internal payload, to mention a few. This paper presents the aerodynamic design and control of the Mexican Blended Wing-Body aircraft, EHEKATL. The aerodynamic coefficients are obtained using XFLR5 for a specific flight condition to guarantee static longitudinal stability. Assuming that some aerodynamics coefficients and parameters of the EHEKATL BWB are unknown, an adaptive Backstepping controller for cruise flight is proposed. Stability conditions to guarantee asymptotically convergence of tracking errors are shown. Finally, numerical simulation results, under many conditions, show the satisfactory performance of the proposed approach during cruise phase flight.