Longitudinal Control Law Design and Handling Qualities Optimization for a Business Jet Flight Control System

A comprehensive set of stability, handling qualities, and performance specifications was used to drive the optimization of commonly used fixed-wing longitudinal control laws applied to a business jet. The specifications were divided into two tiers. The first were the key flight control and handling qualities requirements and were used directly for optimization, while the second were used as a check afterwards. Similarities between the commonly used longitudinal control laws investigated in this study and a model following controller were exploited to explicitly set feed-forward gains to provide good handling qualities. A linear-quadratic regulator method was employed for preliminary design as a way to initialize the control law feedback gain values for optimization. A multi-objective parametric optimization approach was then used to arrive at feedback gains that concurrently satisfy all specifications. Using this optimization approach, the trade-offs of increased crossover frequency were investigated. In addition, a smooth gain schedule was generated by optimizing the control law parameters of different flight conditions to meet the same requirements. This paper describes the control law architecture used as well as the optimization approach, the specifications used, and the design results.

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