Robust thrust-only control of a civil transport aircraft with vertical tail damage

Abstract

Abstract Thrust-only control of a jet transportation aircraft is also referred to as propulsion-controlled aircraft (PCA). It may be adopted as an alternative to using propulsive force to provide a certain level of control capability in case of failure of the aircraft's conventional control system. Previous PCA research was mainly concerned with control surface malfunctions such as free-floating and locked-in-place situations. On the other hand, structural damage to the aircraft control surfaces makes it necessary for PCA study and results in significant challenges due to the damage-induced aerodynamic and geometric parameter deviations. This paper presents a damage-tolerant control system design for aircraft with vertical tail damage. An H∞ loop transfer recovery (LTR) technique is applied to address the stability recovery and robustness of performance in maintaining safe flight operation of a damaged aircraft. Modelling of the damaged flight dynamics and control design is presented followed by numerical...