Aircraft flight control system design under state and control bounds

Sophisticated control configurations are needed to meet the mission and pilotage requirements for advanced aircraft. The required vehicle performance during low altitude, low speed and high angle of attack flight, all-weather, day and night operations must be achieved, and new control technologies should be developed. This work presents a systematic control design philosophy for flight control systems when the state variables and control inputs are bounded by the prespecified constraints. The design procedure uses the dynamic programming concept. The fundamental idea involves minimization of nonquadratic functionals. A new representation of constraints is proposed using the smooth functions. The advantages of the synthesis approach are presented. To illustrate the design methodology the longitudinal control configuration for the F-18 fighter is synthesized.