Multiobjective design for an integrated flight control system: a combination with model reduction approach

Modem aircraft include a variety of automatic control systems that aid the flight in navigation, flight management, and augmenting the stability characteristics of the airplane. Typical control systems development involves multiple requirements or objectives. On the other hand, the increasing level of complexity and sophistication of aircraft systems leads to a hierarchical architecture that the overall system consists of many distributed components and subsystems. It brings an even more challenging task to consider the multiobjective design and integrated control together. Previous work (2001) has been conducted to propose a uniform framework and design approach where the control integration strategy and multiple objectives can be addressed simultaneously, but the complexity of designed controller may not lead to a practically sound solution. In this paper, we present the investigation of reducing the order of the controller using the model reduction techniques. A numerical pitch/speed autopilot is further applied to illustrate the effectiveness of the controller order reduction.