A Novel Intelligent Control System Design for Aircraft Flight Dynamics

A novel design of intelligent flight control system is proposed for nonlinear aircraft dynamic systems, in which a proposed control system can allow aircraft to learn-to-fly (L2F) and adjust by itself due to aircraft damages and external disturbances. The proposed control system is developed by a combined approach of a suitable concept of commands, a schedule for automatic update of aircraft aerodynamic model from identification system, and an integrator-backstepping control law. The research mainly focuses on an intelligent control scheme to make aircraft control system more capable to adapt in the presence of external disturbance and damage. In this approach, a current control design model can be replaced and updated automatically by a new design model provided by identification system technique. Also, a formulation of semi-variable and variable gains is provided for an automatic update without requiring a calculation for a new control parameters. This new automatic gain schedule assures that the proposed control strategy can still achieve with good performance and stability in the presence of damages and replacement of a new model. Indoor experimental study of L-59 free-to-roll (FTR) aircraft model is implemented to verify and validate the proposed method.