Robust control of longitudinal flight with handling qualities constraints

Classical flight control systems are still widely used in industry because of acquired experience and good understanding of their structure. Nevertheless, with more stringent constraints, it becomes difficult to easily fulfill all the criteria with this classical control laws. This article aims at showing that this problem can be solved by first designing a high order controller satisfying all the constraints, then by reducing and structuring it in order to make it look like a classical controller. Firstly, an H∞ synthesis is performed in order to get a robust controller versus mass and center of gravity variations, which will satisfy the handling qualities; then it will be reduced by using robust modal control techniques

Robust scheduled control of longitudinal flight with handling quality satisfaction

Classic flight control systems are still widely used in the industry because of acquired experience and good understanding of their structure. Nevertheless, with more stringent constraints, it becomes difficult to easily fulfil all the criteria with these classic control laws. On the other hand, modern methods can handle many constraints but fail to produce low order controllers. The following methodology proposed in this paper addresses both classic and modern flight control issues, to offer a solution that leverages the strengths of both approaches. First, an H∞ synthesis is performed in order to get controllers which satisfy handling qualities and are robust withrespect to mass and centre of gravity variations. These controllers are then reduced and structured by using robust modal control techniques. In conclusion, a self-scheduling technique is described that will schedule these controllers over the entire flight envelope

Control of a launcher in atmospheric ascent with guardian maps

This paper describes the synthesis of a SISO scheduled controller for a launcher vehicle. The problem consists in designing a control law which will be valid on the atmospheric ascent trajectory from time 25 s to time 60 s, while ensuring robustness and performance requirements. Moreover a flexible model with two bending modes is considered, making the problem more challenging. An algorithm based upon guardian maps has been retained in order to find an a priori fixed architecture controller. The algorithm yields a sequence of controllers that ensures that pole confinement constraints are fulfilled for any time between 25 s and 60 s. The user can then interpolate those controllers to find a scheduled controller with respect to time

Longitudinal flight control design with handling quality requirements

This work presents a method for selecting the gain parameters of a C* control law for an aircraft’s longitudinal motion. The design incorporates various handling quality requirements involving modal, time- and frequency-domain criteria that were fixed by the aircraft manufacturer. After necessary model order- reductions, the design proceeds in essentially two-step s: Stability Augmentation System (SAS) loop design and Control Augmentation System (CAS) loop design. The approach partly relies on the use of guardian maps to characterize, in each case, the set of gain parameters for which desired handling quality requirements are satisfied. The approach is applied throughout the full flight envelope of a business jet aircraft and yields satisfactory results

Output-Feedback Control of a Chaotic MEMS Resonator for Oscillation Amplitude Enhancement

The present work addresses the problem of chaos control in an electrostatic MEMS resonator by using an output-feedback control scheme. One of the unstable orbits immersed in the chaotic attractor is stabilized in order to produce a sustained oscillation of the movable plate composing the microstructure. The orbit is carefully chosen so as to produce a high amplitude oscillation. This approach allows the enhancement of oscillation amplitude of the resonator at a reduced control effort, since the unstable orbit already exists in the system and it is not necessary to spend energy to create it. Realistic operational conditions of the MEMS are considered including parametric uncertainties in the model and constraints due to the difficulty in measuring the speed of the plates of the microstructure. A control law is constructed recursively by using the technique of backstepping. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to confirm the validity of the developed control scheme and to demonstrate the effect of controlling orbits immersed in the chaotic attractor

Gain scheduling with guardian maps for longitudinal flight control

A new approach to gain scheduling of linear controllers is proposed and applied to a longitudinal flight control pro-blem. Traditionally, gain scheduling is done a posteriori by the interpolation of controller gains designed for several operating points or conditions. The method proposed here is based on guardian maps and does not require as many linear controller syntheses as there are design points. Rather, it extends the performance of an initial single controller carried out on an arbitrary operating point to the entire domain while ensuring generalized stability all along the process. The method, which uses a given fixed architecture controller, is successfully applied on the longitudinal flight control of a business jet aircraft

New stability and performance results for singularly perturbed systems

Guardian maps -- Singularly perturbed systems with no exogenous parameter -- Singularly perturbed systems with an exogenous parameter -- Proofs