Classical design and analysis techniques, many of which date back to the 1950's, are still predominantly used in the aerospace industry for the design and analysis of automatic flight control and aero-engine control systems. The continued success and popularity of these techniques is particularly impressive considering the radical advances in aircraft and spacecraft design and avionics technology made over this period. Clearly, an understanding of both the advantages and limitations of these methods is essential in order to properly evaluate the likely usefulness of more modern techniques for the design and analysis of aerospace control systems. One of the themes of this book is that the multivariable robust control methods it describes are logical and natural extensions of the more classical methods, and not replacements for them. It is assumed that readers of this publication are already familiar with classical flight control techniques. Emphasis is on the philosophy, advantages and limitations of the classical approach to flight control system design and analysis. Abstracted in Inspec

Manual flight control system design for fighter aircraft is one of the most demanding problems in automatic control. Fighter aircraft dynamics generally have highly coupled uncertain and nonlinear dynamics. Multivariable control design techniques offer a solution to this problem. Robust Multivariable Flight Control provides the background, theory and examples for full envelope manual flight control system design. It gives a versatile framework for the application of advanced multivariable control theory to aircraft control problems. Two design case studies are presented for the manual flight control of lateral/directional axes of the VISTA-F-16 test vehicle and an F-18 trust vectoring system. They demonstrate the interplay between theory and the physical features of the systems.

This textbook aims to provide a clear understanding of the various tools of analysis and design for robust stability and performance of uncertain dynamic systems. In model-based control design and analysis, mathematical models can never completely represent the “real world” system that is being modeled, and thus it is imperative to incorporate and accommodate a level of uncertainty into the models. This book directly addresses these issues from a deterministic uncertainty viewpoint and focuses on the interval parameter characterization of uncertain systems. Various tools of analysis and design are presented in a consolidated manner. This volume fills a current gap in published works by explicitly addressing the subject of control of dynamic systems from linear state space framework, namely using a time-domain, matrix-theory based approach. This book also: Presents and formulates the robustness problem in a linear state space model framework. Illustrates various systems level methodologies with examples and applications drawn from aerospace, electrical and mechanical engineering. Provides connections between lyapunov-based matrix approach and the transfer function based polynomial approaches. Robust Control of Uncertain Dynamic Systems: A Linear State Space Approach is an ideal book for first year graduate students taking a course in robust control in aerospace, mechanical, or electrical engineering.

Multivariable Control Systems focuses on control design with continual references to the practical aspects of implementation. While the concepts of multivariable control are justified, the book emphasises the need to maintain student interest and motivation over exhaustive mathematical proof. Tools of analysis and representation are always developed as methods for achieving a final control system design and evaluation. Features: • design implementation laid out using extensive reference to MATLAB®; • combined consideration of systems (plant) and signals (mainly disturbances); • step-by-step approach from the objectives of multivariable control to the solution of complete design problems. Multivariable Control Systems is an ideal text for graduate students or for final-year undergraduates looking for more depth than provided by introductory textbooks. It will also interest the control engineer practising in industry and seeking to implement robust or multivariable control solutions to plant problems.

Multivariable Feedback Control: Analysis and Design, Second Edition presents a rigorous, yet easily readable, introduction to the analysis and design of robust multivariable control systems. Focusing on practical feedback control and not on system theory in general, this book provides the reader with insights into the opportunities and limitations of feedback control. Taking into account the latest developments in the field, this fully revised and updated second edition: * features a new chapter devoted to the use of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs); * presents current results on fundamental performance limitations introduced by RHP-poles and RHP-zeros; * introduces updated material on the selection of controlled variables and self-optimizing control; * provides simple IMC tuning rules for PID control; * covers additional material including unstable plants, the feedback amplifier, the lower gain margin and a clear strategy for incorporating integral action into LQG control; * includes numerous worked examples, exercises and case studies, which make frequent use of Matlab and the new Robust Control toolbox. Multivariable Feedback Control: Analysis and Design, Second Edition is an excellent resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses studying multivariable control. It is also an invaluable tool for engineers who want to understand multivariable control, its limitations, and how it can be applied in practice. The analysis techniques and the material on control structure design should prove very useful in the new emerging area of systems biology. Reviews of the first edition: "Being rich in insights and practical tips on controller design, the book should also prove to be very beneficial to industrial control engineers, both as a reference book and as an educational tool." Applied Mechanics Reviews "In summary, this book can be strongly recommended not only as a basic text in multivariable control techniques for graduate and undergraduate students, but also as a valuable source of information for control engineers." International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing

Recent Developments in H¿ theory have produced a promising new design approach. However, a large gap between theory and practice has emerged, with as yet very few design examples applied to real industrial control problems. The work described in this monograph aims to narrow this gap, and to address implementation issues associated with multivariable H¿ controllers. An H¿ control law has been developed and tested for the DRA (Defence Research Agency) Bedford research Harrier. The first part of this text introduces the basic components of the flight control and engine systems and describes the models for the different sub-systems. The second part deals with implementational problems including the discretization process, handling limitations on actuators and the nonlinearities in the system.

A graduate text providing broad coverage of linear multivariable control systems, including several new results and recent approaches.