Flight and HIL Testing of a Longitudinal Model Reference Adaptive Controller on a High-Lag General Aviation Aircraft

Abstract

Model reference adaptive flight control (dynamic inverse with adaptation) methodology is adapted for use for a general aviation Hawker Beechcraft Bonanza fly by wire testbed. The control method is based on the work of Calise and the NASA Integrated Resilient Aircraft Control project. A derivation of the simplified inverse controller and adaptive elements is presented. The controller is a longitudinal flight controller that tracks pilot inputs of velocity and flight path angle. An L2 tracking error metric has been used in a previous paper to tune the outer controller loop gains by introducing artificial time delays in the control signals to determine the time delay margin. Results of this study are sumarized. Hardware in the loop control software ground testing led to modified controller gains for flight testing. Flight test results are presented in this paper as well as desktop simulation and ground test results.