On the Performance of Model Predictive Controller in Controlling Aircraft Pitch Angle

One of the most important issues in the field of flight dynamic analysis is designing automatic flight control systems for the aircrafts. In fact, automatic aircraft control systems are usually considered as fundamental components of the aircrafts. As a special case, it is of high importance to control the aircraft pitch angle which is a critical issue that may avoid some dangerous results and should be investigated in fluctuation control and sudden variations reduction. This task could be done appropriately by using an adequate control system. In this paper and on the first step, mathematical models of the aircraft control systems are presented and then the model predictive control algorithm is applied on them. The goal is the pitch angle controlling of the aircraft. In order to evaluate the performance of mentioned controller, a pulse train with the amplitude of 11.5 degrees and the period of 7 seconds is considered as the input of the system. To validate the performance of the mentioned model predictive controller, its performance is compared with PID and LQR controllers.

Keywords:

Air Craft , Flight Dynamics , Model Predictive Controller , Pitch AngleI