Date of Award:

12-2026

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Tianyi He

Committee

Tianyi He

Committee

Douglas Hunsaker

Committee

Matthew Harris

Committee

Zhongquan Zheng

Committee

Weihua Su

Abstract

Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft are hybrid aircraft having both a helicopter flight mode and a fixed-wing plane flight mode. The objective of this dissertation is to examine and evaluate a new approach, physics-data-hybrid (PDH), for VTOL aircraft modeling and control. The PDH approach combines traditional, physics-based methods (Newtonian mechanics) with data driven methods (a machine learning technique called a Koopman operator model) to create an efficient and accurate modeling and control framework—mitigating the disadvantages of the purely physics-based and purely data-driven methods. The PDH approach is used to model scenarios when the VTOL aircraft transitions between helicopter mode and fixed-wing mode. The PDH approach is also used to design a controller (using a technique called dynamic inversion control) with proof guarantees of convergence to desired flight outcomes. To achieve the objective, research on VTOL aircraft is proposed as follows: 1) Describe VTOL aircraft movement with a new physics-based model and evaluate the model's use on a physics-based controller. 2) Formulate a new PDH model and control and evaluate its performance. 3) Evaluate the use of the new models and controls in more realistic flight tests. From the research, an optimal flight trajectory through the aircraft's transition zone, the flight region where the aircraft switches between helicopter and fixed-wing flight, was first determined. A physics-based linear parameter-varying model predictive control (LPV-MPC) algorithm was then developed to track that optimal trajectory. Next, combining the LPV model with a Koopman model, and interpretable and computationally efficient PDH model was derived, and dynamic inversion control was designed for tracking desired trajectories. Both control approaches were developed with proof guarantees and validated via VTOL aircraft simulations or other experiments. The outcomes of this dissertation addressed key modeling and control challenges associated with VTOL aircraft operating in transition flight. Compared with state-of-the art approaches, the proposed methods provide computationally efficient and guaranteed performance for handling the nonlinear dynamics of transition flight.

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