The history of flight control is inseparably linked to the history of aviation itself. Since the early days, the concept of automatic flight control systems has evolved from mechanical control systems to highly advanced automatic fly-by-wire flight control systems which can be found nowadays in military jets and civil airliners. Even today, many research efforts are made for the further development of these flight control systems in various aspects. Recent new developments in this field focus on a wealth of different aspects. This book focuses on a selection of key research areas, such as inertial navigation, control of unmanned aircraft and helicopters, trajectory control of an unmanned space re-entry vehicle, aeroservoelastic control, adaptive flight control, and fault tolerant flight control. This book consists of two major sections. The first section focuses on a literature review and some recent theoretical developments in flight control systems. The second section discusses some concepts of adaptive and fault-tolerant flight control systems. Each technique discussed in this book is illustrated by a relevant example.

In Hubschraubern kommen mitunter aufwändige regelungstechnische Verfahren zum Einsatz, um ein intuitiv steuerbares und stabiles Verhalten der Maschine zu erzeugen. Klassische Ansätze in der Entwicklung setzen dabei auf Iterationen aus Systemidentifikation und Auslegung des Systems im Frequenzbereich. In diesem Buch wird vor dem Hintergrund der nur zu gerne unterschätzten Problematik der begrenzten Bandbreiten eine robuste adaptive Regelung eingeführt. Dazu wird ein hochfrequent-aktualisierender L1-adaptiver Regler entsprechend angepasst, ein neues adaptives Gesetz der Ausgangsrückführung eingeführt, eine neue Strategie zur Auslegung der Zustandsrückführung vorgestellt, und für den sicherheitskritischen Aspekt Effekte von Ungenauigkeiten im Rechentakt und von Sensorrauschen evaluiert. Während klassische Ansätze durch nichtlineare Optimierung weitestgehend automatisierbar sind und dennoch die Notwendigkeit wiederholter Flugtests nicht verhindern können, ist der L1-adaptive Regler bei entsprechendem Systemverständnis besonders geeignet, Entwicklungszeiten zu verkürzen. Strenge mathematische Beweise untermauern die Stabilität und Robustheit der eingeführten Algorithmen, wobei die Flugeigenschaften in einem Forschungssimulator verifiziert werden. Often, very complex controller techniques are applied to helicopters for generating an intuitively controllable and stable behavior of the aircraft. In legacy controllers, a number of iterations of system identification and loop shaping methods in frequency domain have to be conducted. In this book, a robust adaptive control theory is introduced, with the often underestimated fact of only limited available bandwidths in mind. To this end, the high-frequency adapting L1-adaptive controller is adjusted, a new adaptive law for output feedback is introduced, a new strategy for defining the design of a state feedback controller is proposed, and effects of uncertainties in the processor clock rate and of sensor noise are evaluated for taking the safety critical nature of the system into account. While legacy approaches can be automated by nonlinear optimization techniques and yet cannot eliminate the necessity of repeated flight tests, the L1-adaptive controller is particularly suitable to reduce development time, provided a sufficiently deep understanding of the system is available. Rigorous mathematical proofs substantiate the stability and robustness of the algorithms as shown, while performance and handling qualities are verified in a research simulator.

An adaptive control scheme may provide the best approach to the problem of accommodating automatic flight control systems to the variations of dynamic characteristics encountered over the flight envelope of the aircraft. The C*-Criterion for aircraft time response provides a basis for the design of such a system. To provide a margin of safety, all control systems have redundant channels for emergency use. An adaptive control system can be designed to be self-organizing, and in such a configuration can provide its own failure monitoring, resulting in a simpler and more efficient system. This study shows that such a system is feasible, that the response of the system is within the limits set forth in the C*-Criterion, and that the self-organizing characteristics provide reliable operation over the whole range of flight operations. (Author).

This is an updated edition of the well-known introduction to the principles involved in the automatic flight of fixed-wing and rotary wing aircraft. The principles are related to the systems used in the representative types of aircraft (UK and US) currently in service.