CFD Simulation of Coandă-Actuated Flight Control With Predictive Cost Adaptive Control

This paper applies predictive cost adaptive control (PCAC) to a CFD-simulated flight with Coandă jet actuation. PCAC requires no initial model of the system, and instead uses online system identification along with model predictive control. Here, an airfoil is modified to incorporate a simplified model of a Coandă actuator at its trailing edge, and PCAC modulates the actuator in order to achieve a target altitude in a free-flight simulation. The motion of the airfoil is governed by rigid body dynamics and is modeled in the CFD formulation using an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach. During the simulation, PCAC updates the Coandă jet momenta by modifying the actuator boundary conditions. The cases presented in this paper demonstrate that PCAC, when used in the context of Coandă-actuated flight control, is able to reliably track and maintain altitudes without violating constraints.