A Hybrid Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Control for Improving Flying Qualities of Asymmetric Store Configuration Aircraft

Highly maneuverability fighter aircrafts are equipped with various weapons for successful air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. The aircraft has abrupt transient response due to ejection force generated when store of one wing is launched and the movement of lateral center-of-gravity (YCG) changing by the mass distribution of both wings after launched. Under maintaining 1 g level flight with manual trim system in the asymmetric store configuration, the aircraft causes unexpected roll motion for the pure longitudinal maneuver because the change of AoA and airspeed changes the amount of trim for level flight of the aircraft. For this reason, the pilot should continuously use the roll control stick input to maintain level flight. This characteristic increases the pilot’s workload and adversely affects the flying qualities of the aircraft, which is a major cause of deteriorating mission efficiency for combat maneuver. In this paper, we propose a hybrid control that combines model- and sensor-based Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) control based mathematical model of the supersonic advanced trainer to minimize the transient response of the aircraft when the store is launched and to effectively reduce the unexpected roll motion that occurs for the pure longitudinal maneuvering in the asymmetric store configuration. As a result of the frequency- and time-domain evaluation, the proposed control method can effectively reduce the transient response for store launch and minimize unexpected roll motion for the pure longitudinal maneuver. Therefore, this control method can effectively improve flying qualities and mission efficiency by reducing the pilot’s workload in the operation of the asymmetric store configuration.