Robust Flight Control: A Design Challenge

In October 1994, 22 organisations throughout Europe accepted a challenge to solve a specific robust flight control design problem. The results of that design challenge, presented at the GARTEUR Specialists' Workshop in Toulouse, France in April 1997, are reported here. Two flight control benchmarks are considered, based on the automatic landing phase of a large cargo aircraft and on the control of a military aircraft. Methods applied include: classical control; multi-objective optimisation; eigenstructure assignment; modal multi-model approach; LQ, Lyapunov and H¿-techniques; ¿-synthesis; nonlinear dynamic inversion; robust inverse dynamics estimation; model predictive control and following; and fuzzy control. Involved in the definition of the benchmarks and the evaluation process have been representatives from the European aeronautical industry, bringing a strong link with flight control law design practice.