Evolutionary design of a full–envelope flight control system for an unstable fighter aircraft

Avanzini, Giulio and Minisci, Edmondo (2010) Evolutionary design of a full–envelope flight control system for an unstable fighter aircraft. In: IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2010, 2010-07-18. (https://doi.org/10.1109/CEC.2010.5586316)

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Abstract

The use of an evolutionary algorithm in the framework of H∞ control theory is being considered as a means for synthesizing controller gains that minimize a weighted combination of the infinite-norm of the sensitivity function (for disturbance attenuation requirements) and complementary sensitivity function (for robust stability requirements) at the same time. The case study deals with the stability and control augmentation of an unstable high-performance jet aircraft. Constraints on closed-loop response are also enforced, that represent typical requirements on airplane handling qualities, that makes the control law synthesis process more demanding. Gain scheduling is required, in order to obtain satisfactory performance over the whole flight envelope, so that the synthesis is performed at different reference trim conditions, for several values of the dynamic pressure, Q, used as the scheduling parameter. Nonetheless, the dynamic behaviour of the aircraft may exhibit significant variations when flying at different altitudes h, even for the same value of the dynamic pressure, so that a trade-off is required between different feasible controllers synthesized for a given value of Q, but different h. A multi-objective search is thus considered for the determination of the best suited solution to be introduced in the scheduling of the control law. The obtained results are then tested on a longitudinal nonlinear model of the aircraft.

ORCID iDs

Avanzini, Giulio and Minisci, Edmondo ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9951-8528;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)