Uniting local and global controllers for the Caltech ducted fan

Caltech's ducted fan experiment is used as a case study to investigate the properties of an algorithm for uniting local and global controllers proposed by Teel et al. (1997). To simplify the control design process and to illustrate robustness, the ducted fan is modeled as a linear system with input rate limits. The local controller is an (fairly aggressive) LQR state feedback while the (semi-) global controller is a much less aggressive LQR state feedback. Closed-loop simulation results are provided using a fully nonlinear model of the ducted fan derived from wind tunnel data. Experimental results are also provided using the actual Caltech ducted fan.