Robust Control Law for Advanced Flight Control System

Traditional explicit model-following (EMF) control and model reference adaptive control (MRAC) theories are employed to develop a reliable and robust control law for helicopter flight control system. The control law developed in this paper is attractive to the helicopter community due to the following two reasons: (1) ease of implementation with existing helicopter flight control systems (no major changes in flight software) and (2) highly robust to flight control system uncertainties such as nonlinearity effects and/or changes of flight conditions. This paper illustrates the design methodology for combining the traditional and adaptive control approaches to produce the robust controller for advanced rotorcraft flight control system. The combined robust control law is then applied to the Blackhawk UH-60 helicopter model, and its performance is tested and evaluated at various flight conditions.