High angle of attack short period flight control design with thrust vectoring

A manual flight control system for the short period dynamics of a modern fighter aircraft incorporating thrust vectoring at high angles of attack (α) is presented. Design goals are posed in terms of maintaining acceptable flying qualities during high a maneuvering while also achieving robustness to model parameter variations and unmodeled dynamics. An inner loop dynamic inversion/outer loop structured singular value (μ)-synthesis control structure is used to separately address operating envelope variations and robustness concerns, respectively, eliminating the need for gain scheduling. Angle of attack command following performance objectives are built into both loops. Realistic representations of both structured (real parametric) and unstructured uncertainty are included in the design/analysis process. A flight condition dependent control selector maps generalized controls to physical control deflections. Effects of including actuator rate and position limits are investigated for an aggressive α doublet command, comparing daisy chained and ganged controls methods