CFD-based Fluidic Thrust Vectoring model for fighter aircraft

Fluidic Thrust Vectoring based on Shock Vector Control is investigated as a technique to improve the performance of a fighter aircraft. Time accurate CFD simulations are performed in order to describe the time history of the thrust produced by a jet engine when a secondary control flow is injected into the the nozzle. The data is exploited to identify a reduced model of the nozzle dynamics which is then introduced into a dynamic model of the full aircraft. An adaptive controller is suitably designated for the evaluation of the throttle command provided by the thrust vectoring, in which the derivatives of the control system are evaluated by CFD-based analysis. In detail, the longitudinal plane of the F16 fighter is considered, in which the pitch rate is controlled only by the thrust vectoring. A Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) is also designed to compare the performance of both controllers on a reference maneuver.