An adaptive backstepping design for longitudinal flight path control

The paper presents a design technique using adaptive backstepping method for the aircraft longitudinal flight path control laws. This control method constructs the Lyapunov function using backstepping loops, and designs on-line GCMAC neural networks used to study and compensate the unknown aerodynamic uncertainties in the plant model. Then, the neural network weights turn laws are designed based on Lyapunov approach, which guarantee the states tracking error of the nonlinear system and the approximation errors of neural network converge to zero. This control method is used to design the flight path angle control system and aircraft longitudinal automatic landing control system which only consider gliding and leveling phase. The simulation results show that the adaptive backstepping controller has a good tracking performance and robustness.