Robust Flight Control Of Rotorcraft

Manual flight control system design for fighter aircraft is one of the most demanding problems in automatic control. Fighter aircraft dynamics generally have highly coupled uncertain and nonlinear dynamics. Multivariable control design techniques offer a solution to this problem. Robust Multivariable Flight Control provides the background, theory and examples for full envelope manual flight control system design. It gives a versatile framework for the application of advanced multivariable control theory to aircraft control problems. Two design case studies are presented for the manual flight control of lateral/directional axes of the VISTA-F-16 test vehicle and an F-18 trust vectoring system. They demonstrate the interplay between theory and the physical features of the systems.

Classical design and analysis techniques, many of which date back to the 1950's, are still predominantly used in the aerospace industry for the design and analysis of automatic flight control and aero-engine control systems. The continued success and popularity of these techniques is particularly impressive considering the radical advances in aircraft and spacecraft design and avionics technology made over this period. Clearly, an understanding of both the advantages and limitations of these methods is essential in order to properly evaluate the likely usefulness of more modern techniques for the design and analysis of aerospace control systems. One of the themes of this book is that the multivariable robust control methods it describes are logical and natural extensions of the more classical methods, and not replacements for them. It is assumed that readers of this publication are already familiar with classical flight control techniques. Emphasis is on the philosophy, advantages and limitations of the classical approach to flight control system design and analysis. Abstracted in Inspec

In October 1994, 22 organisations throughout Europe accepted a challenge to solve a specific robust flight control design problem. The results of that design challenge, presented at the GARTEUR Specialists' Workshop in Toulouse, France in April 1997, are reported here. Two flight control benchmarks are considered, based on the automatic landing phase of a large cargo aircraft and on the control of a military aircraft. Methods applied include: classical control; multi-objective optimisation; eigenstructure assignment; modal multi-model approach; LQ, Lyapunov and H¿-techniques; ¿-synthesis; nonlinear dynamic inversion; robust inverse dynamics estimation; model predictive control and following; and fuzzy control. Involved in the definition of the benchmarks and the evaluation process have been representatives from the European aeronautical industry, bringing a strong link with flight control law design practice.

New results, fresh ideas and new applications in automotive and flight control systems are presented in this second edition of Robust Control. The book presents parametric methods and tools for the simultaneous design of several representative operating conditions and several design specifications in the time and frequency domains. It also covers methods for robustness analysis that guarantee the desired properties for all possible values of the plant uncertainty. A lot of practical application experience enters into the case studies of driver support systems that avoid skidding and rollover of cars, automatic car steering systems, flight controllers for unstable aircraft and engine-out controllers. The book also shows the historic roots of the methods, their limitations and research needs in robust control.

Written by leading experts in the field, this book provides the state-of-the-art in terms of fault tolerant control applicable to civil aircraft. The book consists of five parts and includes online material.

The history of flight control is inseparably linked to the history of aviation itself. Since the early days, the concept of automatic flight control systems has evolved from mechanical control systems to highly advanced automatic fly-by-wire flight control systems which can be found nowadays in military jets and civil airliners. Even today, many research efforts are made for the further development of these flight control systems in various aspects. Recent new developments in this field focus on a wealth of different aspects. This book focuses on a selection of key research areas, such as inertial navigation, control of unmanned aircraft and helicopters, trajectory control of an unmanned space re-entry vehicle, aeroservoelastic control, adaptive flight control, and fault tolerant flight control. This book consists of two major sections. The first section focuses on a literature review and some recent theoretical developments in flight control systems. The second section discusses some concepts of adaptive and fault-tolerant flight control systems. Each technique discussed in this book is illustrated by a relevant example.