Nonlinear Robust Control on Yaw Motion of a Variable-Speed Unmanned Aerial Helicopter under Multi-Source Disturbances

This paper studies the multi-source disturbances attenuation problem on the yaw motion of unmanned aerial helicopter with a variable-speed rotor. The yaw motion subsystem dominated by an electrically-driven tail rotor is firstly introduced, and its trajectory accuracy requires particularly close attention. To this end, we establish a fourth-order yaw error dynamic equation; subsequently, a nonlinear robust control scheme based on optimal H∞ principle is developed, consisting of laws of virtual functions, parameter estimation and a compensation signal. The novelty of this scheme lies in unifying the techniques to deal with the uncertain parameters, noise perturbations, actuator output fault and external airflow turbulence into a simple framework. Stability analysis guarantees that the yaw closed-loop system has the predefined performance of disturbance suppression in the sense of a finite L2-gain. Comparison results with the extended state observer based backstepping controller verify the effectiveness and superior performance of proposed scheme in an aircraft prototype.

A novel multivariable nonlinear robust control design for turbofan engines

Traditional steady-state control methods are applied to turbofan engines operating in the small region near certain operating conditions, which need to switch controllers for operating in the large region and then may lead to instability and performance degradation of the closed-loop system. In this paper, a novel multivariable nonlinear robust control method for turbofan engines is proposed to improve the control performance within the large region. To enlarge the controllable region, a polynomial state-space model describes the nonlinear characteristics of turbofan engines. Based on the analysis of the closed-loop control system, by using the Lyapunov function theorems, a polynomial robust controller is designed to ensure the stability and desired nonlinear control performance of turbofan engines. Compared with the classical PI, mixed sensitivity, and H∞ control, simulation results show that the proposed method has better transient responses, disturbance rejection, and other control performance for the turbofan engine within the large region.