An Integrated Approach to Predictive Flight Guidance and Envelope Protection

Abstract

This paper deals with an integrated approach to predictive aircraft guidance and envelope protection applied to vertical ight path and airspeed control. The combination of discrete model-predictive control and dynamic trim method features into a constrained optimal guidance enabling envelope protection on a high automation level without limiting the basic systems performance. This approach oers a highly integrated solution optimizing the trade-o between high level ight management needs, low level basic ight control and aircraft performance constraints while maintaining the overall aircraft systems safety. The main topics addressed in this paper include 1) detailed introduction of the basic concept and its elements { discrete model predictive control, dynamic trim method and outer-loop-constraints approach { and 2) implementation and demonstration of the concept for longitudinal guidance in MATLAB R /SIMULINK R . Results obtained from various simulation runs have demonstrated the capability and feasibility of the proposed predictive ight guidance and envelope protection scheme.