Optimal control design for aerospace vehicles

Abstract

This paper deals with design of optimal controller for aerospace vehicle dynamics. These vehicles include an aircraft and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) model. For both aircraft and UAV, decoupled longitudinal and lateral dynamic models are derived using Newtonian-mechanics. The non-linear models are linearized and converted to state space form. These models are implemented in Matlab/Simulink and analyzed. The simulation results obtained without any controller, show unsatisfactory behavior and performance for these models. The control technique designed and implemented for both aircraft and UAV dynamics, is linear matrix inequality (LMI). These vehicles are subjected to external disturbances during flight envelope which further increase its complexity for controller design. The simulation results obtained using LMI for all these dynamics show effective improvement in both performance and stabilization for different flight missions.