Design and Piloted Simulation of Envelope-Protected Control for Flying Wing Aircraft

Commercial applications of flying wing aircraft present a unique opportunity to improve fuel efficiency in aviation, but also pose significant challenges in stability and control. This paper improves the existing flight control laws of a commercial flying wing concept called the Flying-V. The paper designs and evaluates normal law flight controls through piloted flight simulations on a moving base flight simulator, assessing handling qualities, certification compliance, and flight envelope protection capabilities. Industry-inspired outer guidance loops include envelope protections for angle of attack, bank, pitch, and load factor, using command limiting exponential potential functions to smoothly enforce limits and prevent longitudinal instability. The inner loop employs incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion. Results demonstrate that the Flying-V model, augmented with the proposed controller, achieves Level 1 handling qualities and meets nearly all certification requirements. Flight envelope protection maneuvers confirm that exponential potential functions deliver protection performance comparable to commercial aircraft and successfully prevent unstable behavior.