High-α maneuver under lateral centre of gravity uncertainty: A robust adaptive backstepping control scheme

The present note addresses the novel problem of executing complex aircraft maneuvers under considerable center of gravity (c.g.) uncertainties arising from asymmetrical loading or release of payloads, uneven fuel consumption etc. First, the aircraft flight dynamics under predominantly lateral c.g. movement, is approximated and expressed in a block strict feedback form and thereafter an adaptive backstepping controller is proposed to adapt to the c.g. variations. To alleviate the model uncertainty caused by this model approximation and also to provide robustness to aerodynamic uncertainties in high-alpha regions, a sliding mode control is further integrated with the adaptive backstepping control law. Asymptotic stability conditions of the proposed controller are derived from the first principle using Lyapunov’s method and Barbalat’s lemma. To validate the proposed control scheme, the high-alpha Herbst maneuver is implemented in simulation for the F18-HARV aircraft and the results show that the maneuver performance remains nearly the same under both the nominal and the off-nominal c.g. positions.