Flight control design with robustness and handling quality requirements

This paper proposes a design procedure for a classical flight control system with robustness and handling quality specifications. The approach relies on Guardian maps and consists in characterizing controller gain parameters such that the resulting closed-loop poles all lie within a specific region /spl omega/. This region represents the projection of certain types of handling qualities into the complex s-plane. A multivariable polynomial in the gains is used to obtain the set of gains which place the closed-loop poles in the desired region /spl omega/. The same tool is also used to study the robustness of the controller for varying weights and centers of gravity. The data used corresponds to that of a Bombardier Inc. aircraft in longitudinal flight.