Controller Design for Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology Using Structured Singular Value and Direct Search Method

The algebraic approach is applied to the HiMAT (Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology) control. The objective is to find a robust controller which guarantees robust stability and decoupled control of longitudinal model of a scaled remotely controlled vehicle version of the advanced fighter HiMAT. Control design is performed by decoupling the nominal multi-input multi-output system into two identical single-input single-output plants which are approximated by a 4
^th
order transfer function. The algebraic approach is then used for pole placement design and the nominal closed-loop poles are tuned so that the peak of the μ-function is minimal. As an optimization tool, evolutionary algorithm Differential Migration is used in order to overcome the multimodality of the cost function yielding simple controller with decoupling for nominal plant which is compared with the D-K iteration through simulations of standard longitudinal manoeuvres documenting decoupled control obtained from algebraic approach for nominal plant as well as worst case perturbation.