Flight control application of eigenstructure assignment with optimization of robustness to structured state space uncertainty

The authors propose a robust eigenstructure assignment design method which optimizes the sufficient condition for robust stability while constraining the dominant eigenvalues to lie within chosen regions in the complex plane. This constrained optimization problem is solved by using the sequential unconstrained minimization technique with a quadratic extended interior penalty function. Also introduced is a similarity transformation on the uncertain plant which can reduce the conservation of the sufficient condition. The design of a robust eigenstructure assignment controller for a pitch pointing/vertical translation maneuver of the AFTI F-16 aircraft is presented as an example