Aircraft Pitch Control using PID Controller

Aircraft or Airplane is the transport which is most commonly used by the military, navy, an army, etc. Aircraft movement control is a highly non-linear process. But the control of direction and movement plays a vital role in the airplane industry so as to avoid accidents, damage and so on. In aircraft, the stability and control are important parameters. There are three angles which can be used to control the motion such as yaw, roll and pitch for stability. In this paper, the main focus is to control the pitch of the aircraft by making use of the PID controller. Pitch control will help the plane to descend or ascend. Controlling of pitch can be done by adjusting the elevator which is present at the rear side of the plane. Elevators are Flight Control Surfaces (FCS). Aircraft pitch is driven based on longitudinal dynamics. To control the pitch, the optimization methods in particularly Firefly Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization are used to obtain optimized results. Comparison between above mentioned algorithms is done based on the performance criteria and the optimization technique for the Aircraft pitch control is determined.