MPC based compound flight control strategy for a ducted fan aircraft

Abstract

This paper proposes an MPC based compound flight control technique for trajectory tracking and attitude control for a ducted fan aircraft subject to different uncertainties and external disturbances. This approach aims to ensure flight robustness and achieves adequate tracking without sacrificing nominal performance while satisfying constraints under external disturbances and various uncertainties. A nonlinear ducted fan aircraft with non-minimum phase behavior is considered. By unifying a nonlinear disturbance observer with MPC, a compound flight controller is constructed. The recursive feasibility of the optimization problem for the compound controller is guaranteed, and the closed-loop stability is ensured. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed scheme, a robust MPC framework is employed for comparative analysis. Finally, numerical simulations and discussions are provided to corroborate the performance of both compound strategies.