Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
In the past decade considerable attention has been given to the possibility of using self-adaptive control systems to cope with the problem of providing stability augmentation to aircraft over extended flight envelopes. On the other hand, it has sometimes been considered that insufficient attention has been given to the design of autostabilisers with fixed parameters. The authors have applied recent developments In dynamic programming to the design of aircraft autostabilisers. The methods provide a highly systematic approach to the design of multi-loop systems which is especially useful for control of the lateral mode. Furthermore, the resulting optimum multiple feedback coefficients vary little throughout the flight envelope and the use of fixed parameters for the whole of the flight envelope appears to be possible. Aerodynamic data for two aircraft were used: a supersonic VTOL aircraft and a supersonic transport.