Design of robust flight control systems for advanced technology vehicles

Innovative approaches for analysis, design and modeling of advanced flight vehicles are demanded in response to requirements toward substantial performance improvements. Although control theory is thoroughly developed, the calculus of variations and Pontryagin´s principle are not well suited because these methods exhibit rather poor robustness and are hampered by the limited time available for computations. This paper explores the robust control technology for uncertain nonlinear systems and presents innovative design procedures to enhance the robustness for open-loop unstable systems with constraints. Utilizing the Hamilton-Jacobi theory, the developed procedures allow one to find a straightforward avenue to design the robust controllers. A new control methodology is less conservative than the known results and allows us to solve the nonlinear control problem for uncertain systems. The explored time-optimal and antiwindup techniques are studied for a highly-manoeuvrable missile. The longitudinal and rolling flight control, as well as the guidance problem, are treated and solved. To evaluate the robustness, analytical and simulation results are performed