CONSTRAINED PREDICTIVE STRATEGIES FOR FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEMS

The complexity of nowadays flight control sys- tems arises from the engineering prescription to properly merge and integrate actuators, sensors and computing units within complex data net- work structures. The use of many different sen- sors and actuators, the presence of nonlinear phe- nomena, dynamic effects due to switching oper- ating conditions as well as physical constraints due to input/state saturations are of paramount relevance when designing a modern flight con- trol strategy, especially in the case of high per- formance aircrafts. In this paper we analyze the effectiveness of recent constrained predic- tive control strategies when they are used to deal with specific aircraft control problems. Numeri- cal simulations are presented on a High Altitude Performance Demonstrator unmanned air vehicle adopting two different predictive strategies both dealing with redundant and saturating actuators.