An intelligent flight control design with guaranteed flying quality

Abstract

This paper investigates an adaptive pole placement control design aiming at guaranteed flying qualities, which are specified by military standards. Flying qualities are updated online with different flight regimes and are adjusted by the performance measurements of the aircraft. The certainty equivalence principle is used to achieve robust adaptive pole placement control design. The aerodynamics of the F-16 fighter aircraft are linearized at various operating points and are identified online to adapt to the dynamic changes and to account for uncertainties and possible failures. The proposed adaptive scheme is simulated using a nonlinear F-16 model and its performances are compared with those of a traditional gain-scheduling scheme.