Intelligent fuzzy controller for lateral control of aircraft models

In this paper an intelligent control design methodology is presented for the design of controller for commercial aircrafts operating under abnormal flight conditions. The intelligent methodology is fuzzy logic based reference model control. Therefore, an intelligent fuzzy controller is designed and used as control system to meet transient requirements determined by a desired reference model. A generic transport model (GTM) of commercial aircrafts was used to extract a linearized latitudinal dynamic model and it was utilized for testing the effectiveness of the developed intelligent fuzzy controller. A baseline reference controller is used for performance comparison of the intelligent fuzzy controller. First, a fuzzy based controller was developed to track and control a specified state(s) of the aircraft and then its performance is compared with a baseline nominal reference controller. The testing was conducted under two scenarios: 1) Nominal flight conditions to control the yaw movement of the aircraft and 2) A stall failure on the rudder flight surface. The fuzzy controller was designed and interfaced with the aircraft´s aileron and rudder to observe its effectiveness in controlling the lateral movement of the aircraft. The controller was designed based off linearized model of the aircraft to simplify the design process and track the stability of the developed controller. The results obtained from testing of the intelligent fuzzy controller produced desirable performance. The performance of the intelligent fuzzy controller was superior to that produced by the baseline controller. However, the time needed to completely identify and maintain the abnormal state was less than the desired time. Overall, the performance of the intelligent fuzzy controller was superior to that produced by the baseline controller. Details of the design process and the test results of the developed intelligent fuzzy control are report in this paper.