This paper presents a robust controller design for an automatic flight control system (AFCS) for a fighter aircraft model with eight inputs and seven outputs. The controller is designed based on McFarlane-Glover robustifying technique using a simple baseline LQG design. Controllers designed purely based on traditional LQG techniques are known to have no guaranteed robustness margins. The McFarlane-Glover technique can be used to enhance the stability robustness of the baseline LQG design using a two-step design process. In the first step, an LQG controller is designed which is optimized only for performance without any consideration to robustness. In the second step, the performance optimized LQG design is rendered robust using McFarlane-Glover procedure. The robustifying procedure uses a coprime factor uncertainty model and H∞ optimization. An important advantage of this procedure is that no problem dependent uncertainty modelling or weight selection is required in the second step of the process. The robustifying procedure also yields the quantitative estimate of the robustness.
Evolutionary design of a full-envelope flight control system for an unstable fighter aircraft
