Design of a Sliding Mode Control for Wing Rock Suppression in Highly-Swept Wing Aircraft

Wing rock is an oscillatory rolling motion which arises at high angles of attack in aircraft with highly-swept wings. In the present paper, a method to suppress wing rock through sliding mode control is proposed. Sliding mode control is designed to minimize together roll angle error and command input through a cost function. The procedure is performed on a wing-only analytical model, the controller is then applied to a complete wing-fuselage model. Simulations include different angles of attack and robustness is assessed using a model altered by parametric disturbances. Results are compared with the behavior obtained by a conventional roll damper.