11 July 2025

Public Research Talk Announcement

Tilt-Wing Flight and Control

You are warmly welcome to attend two research presentations on the topic of tilt-wing flight dynamics and control. Details are provided below. 

The talks will take place over teams, on Friday 11 July at 15:00 CEST. 

Joining link: Link to Microsoft Teams Meeting

1) Investigating the Tilt-Wing Transition Maneuver with Optimal Control

Speaker: Marc May, Professorship of eAviation / DLR

Abstract: The transition from cruise to hover flight is the decisive flight maneuver for tilt-wing aircraft, as it is required to maintain the vertical landing capability. At the same time, this flight phase is especially challenging, as the low thrust settings for decelerated flight reduce positive slipstream effects, and the wings are pushed towards or beyond flow separation. These conditions become even more severe under failure conditions. To guarantee safe transition maneuvers, in-depth knowledge of the flight physics and aircraft limitations during the transition flight phase is required. In failure scenarios, a precise estimation of the degraded aircraft capabilities enables profound decision making in the mission planning, as well as adaptation of trajectory planning and flight control. This talk introduces the modeling approach and presents the flight dynamic analysis, based on optimal control trajectory optimization, for nominal and failure conditions.

2) Tandem Tilt-Wing Control Law Design using Hybrid Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion

Speaker: Daniel Milz, Professorship of eAviation / DLR

Abstract: The attractiveness of tilt-wing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles has increased over the past decade due to their efficient wing-borne cruise flight and reduced requirements on ground-based infrastructure. However, the control design of these vehicles is still a complex task, given that they operate across multiple flight phases, each with distinct dominant dynamics. In this regard, nonlinear dynamic inversion-based (NDI) control approaches have been demonstrated to offer an effective solution as they decouple the dynamics and provide a clean interface to the higher-level control functions. This talk presents a generalized nonlinear control approach for VTOLs and demonstrates it on a tandem tilt-wing. The control design integrates a hybrid NDI angular rate and velocity inversion with an optimization-based control allocation scheme cascaded with a parallel attitude and flight path controller.

23.11.2022

Royal Aeronautical Society Munich Branch Willy-Messerschmitt Lecture 2022 at Deutschen Museum