Thrust vectoring

Abstract: The design of an adaptive backstepping flight control law for the F-16/MATV (multi-axis thrust vectoring) aircraft is discussed. The control law tracks reference trajectories with the angle of attack a, the stability-axes roll rate p s , and the total velocity V T . Furthermore, the sideslip angle β has to be kept at zero. B-spline neural networks are used inside the parameter update laws of the backstepping control law to approximate the uncertain aerodynamic forces and moments. Command filters are used to implement the constraints on the control surfaces and the virtual control states. The stability of the parameter estimation process during periods of saturation is guaranteed by using a modified tracking error definition, in which the effect of the saturation has been filtered out. The controller and its performance are evaluated on a nonlinear, six-degrees-of-freedom dynamic model of an F-16/MATV aircraft in a number of simulation scenarios.

Abstract: This paper presents a methodology for the design of flight controllers for aircraft operating over large ranges of angle of attack. The methodology is a combination of dynamic inversion and structured singular value (p) synthesis. An inner-loop controller, designed by dynamic inversion, is used to linearize the aircraft dynamics. This inner-loop controller lacks guaranteed robustness to uncertainties in the system model and the measurements; therefore, a robust, linear outer-loop controller is designed using /i synthesis. This controller minimizes the weighted HQO norm of the error between the aircraft response and the specified handling quality model while maximizing robustness to model uncertainties and sensor noise. The methodology is applied to the design of a pitch rate command system for longitudinal control of a high-performance aircraft. Nonlinear simulations demonstrate that the controller satisfies handling quality requirements, provides good tracking of pilot inputs, and exhibits excellent robustness over a wide range of angles of attack and Mach number. The linear controller requires no scheduling with flight conditions. HE objective of this paper is to present a method for design of flight controllers that provides desired handling qualities over a wide range of flight conditions with minimal scheduling. Acceptable stability and performance robustness must be maintained in the presence of unmodeled dynamics, uncertainties in the aircraft design model, and noisy sensor measurements. The aircraft considered in this paper is the NASA high angle-ofattack research vehicle (HARV), which is typical of future fighter aircraft. It is capable of flight at very high angles of attack and has thrust vectoring as well as conventional aerodynamic control surfaces.1 The unaugmented aircraft does not meet handling quality requirements and some type of augmentation is necessary. This paper considers only the longitudinal control. The controller relates pilot longitudinal stick input to the symmetric deflection of the stabilizer and the longitudinal deflection of the thrust vectoring vanes. The control design philosophy is to use an inner-loop, dynamic inversion controller and an outer-loop, linear \JL controller. The dynamic inversion controller linearizes the pitch rate dynamics of the aircraft; however, since model uncertainties prevent exact linearization, there will always be errors associated with this controller. A simple linear fractional transformation model of these errors is developed for use in design of the outer-loop /^ controller. This controller provides pitch rate following by minimizing the weighted //oo-norm of the difference between the actual aircraft pitch rate response to pilot stick inputs and the desired response to these inputs as given by a transfer function model based on standard handling quality specifications. Thus the outer-loop \Ji controller is an implicit model following design, which provides robustness to errors due to the lack of exact cancellation of the pitch rate dynamics by the dynamic inversion controller. Recently a number of papers have appeared that describe controllers for a highly maneuverable aircraft. In Refs. 2-5, application of linear multi-input/multi-output (MIMO) control design techniques to this problem were presented. In every case, excellent