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.

Inhalt
1 Introduction.- 1.1 References.- 2 Technical Preliminaries.- 2.1 Aircraft Dynamics.- 2.2 Flying Qualities.- 2.3 Uncertainty Representation.- 2.4 Structured Singular Value Analysis.- 2.5 Dynamic Inversion.- 2.6 Robust Eigenstructure Assignment.- 2.7 Full Order H? Design.- 2.8 Reduced Order Observer Based H? Design.- 2.9 Structured Singular Value Synthesis.- 2.10 Balanced Realizations and Truncation.- 2.11 Conclusions.- 2.12 References.- 3 Control Design Methodology.- 3.1 Control Selector.- 3.2 Inner Equalization Loop.- 3.3 Outer Robust Performance Loop.- 3.4 Conclusions.- 3.5 References.- 4 VISTA F-16 Lateral/Directional Design.- 4.1 Model Description.- 4.2 Flying Qualities Requirements.- 4.3 Control Selector Design.- 4.4 Inner Loop Design.- 4.5 Outer Loop Design.- 4.6 Controller Implementation.- 4.7 Robustness Analysis.- 4.8 Nonlinear Analysis.- 4.9 Conclusions and Lessons Learned.- 4.10 References.- Appendix 4.- 5 Thrust Vectoring F-18 Design.- 5.1 Model Description.- 5.2 Control Selector Design.- 5.3 Longitudinal Axis Controller.- 5.4 Lateral/Directional Axes Controller.- 5.5 Nonlinear Analysis.- 5.6 Conclusions and Lessons Learned.- 5.7 References.- Appendix 5.- 6 Conclusions.