Nonlinear robust adaptive control of an airplane with structural damage

This article investigates the design of a novel nonlinear robust adaptive control architecture to stabilize and control an airplane in the presence of left-wing damage. Damage effect is modeled by considering the sudden mass and inertia changes, center of gravity, and aerodynamic variations. The novel nonlinear control algorithm applies a state predictor as well as the error between the real damaged dynamics and a virtual model based on the nominal aircraft dynamics in the control loop of the adaptive strategy. The projection operator is used for the purpose of robustness of the adaptive control algorithm. The stability of the proposed nonlinear robust adaptive controller is demonstrated applying the Lyapunov stability theory. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with two previous successful algorithms, which are implemented on the Generic Transport Model airplane to accommodate wing damage. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed robust adaptive algorithm regarding two other algorithms of adaptive sliding mode and L 1 adaptive control.