Adaptive Control for Aircraft Longitudinal Dynamics with Thrust Saturation

Abstract

An output-feedback control law is designed for the longitudinal flight dynamics of an aircraft. The proposed control law is designed using the adaptive backstepping method and does not require any knowledge of aircraft aerodynamics beyond well-known qualitative physical properties. The resulting feedback controller is able to follow given references in both airspeed and flight-path angle by actuating elevator deflections and aircraft engine thrust. Engine physical limits are incorporated into the design by using a Lyapunov function analysis that includes saturation, obtaining a novel hybrid adaptation law that guarantees closed-loop system stability. Simulation results show good performance of the feedback law and, in particular, demonstrate that the hybrid adaptation law improves the behavior of the closed-loop system when saturations are present. A degraded scenario (a sudden cargo displacement that renders the aircraft statically unstable) is also considered to show the adaptation capabilities of the control law. The simulations are carried out using a realistic aircraft model that is also developed in the paper.