Dynamic surface attack angle control for aircraft considering actuator position saturation

As a kind of typical nonlinearity, actuator position saturation (APS) can severely limit the whole performance of flight control system, and even lead to the undesirable inaccuracy and instability of flying aircraft. However, the APS nonlinear characteristic is usually ignored in the traditional design process of flight control system. Taking the pitching channel as example, a design model considering APS nonlinear characteristic and facing to attack angle control is put forward, by means of constructing auxiliary system and introducing smooth approximation function. Using multi-surface robust control and dynamic surface control approaches, one robust attack angle controller with consideration of APS nonlinear characteristic is proposed. Computer simulation results present that, compared with traditional control scheme, the proposed control scheme possesses the better tracking performances of attack angle, including faster regulation speed and higher tracking accuracy.