A decentralized approach to integrated flight control synthesis

A new approach to decoupled control of large-scale non-linear systems is applied to a dynamic flight control. Control synthesis is performed in two steps. First the nominal, programmed control is synthesized using the complete model of flight dynamics. This nominal control should realize the nominal trajectory under ideal conditions with no perturbations. In the second step the tracking of the nominal trajectory is realized. The system is viewed as a set of decoupled subsystems and for each subsystem local control is synthesized. Then, the stability of the overall system is analyzed and the global control is introduced to compensate coupling among some of the subsystems. A particular choice of subsystems in a case of flight control and of local and global control synthesis is proposed. A simulation of flight control with the proposed control law is also presented.