Disturbance Analysis and Flight Control Law Design for Aerial Refueling

The disturbances acting on the receiver aircraft in the aerial refueling procedure are analyzed and a method with a principle of equated pneumatic effects is introduced. Then the non-uniform effects are approximated with effective wind components and wind gradients which can be directly used in the receiver´s standard motion equations, and an equivalent disturbance model for aerial refueling is presented. Furthermore, the receiver´s robust flight control law based on the disturbance model is designed. During the designing process of the robust controller, mu-synthesis is employed and the control effects over the pitch angle, roll angle and yaw angle of the receiver are achieved. Finally, the command-tracking simulation of the receiver closed loop system is made, and the results show that the system is stability robust and its tracking performance is satisfactory.