Clearance of the VAAC Harrier CL002 flight control law using μ-analysis techniques

We describe some new tools for the clearance of flight control laws for highly augmented aircraft. The tools are developed from general μ-analysis methods, and are applied to the clearance of a flight control law for a vertical/short take-off and landing aircraft. Stability robustness analysis results for the flight control law are presented in terms of the standard clearance criteria currently used by the European aerospace industry. Comparisons of the results obtained using μ-analysis and current approaches reveal that the new μ-tools provide more rigorous and efficient analysis of worst-case aircraft stability characteristics in the presence of multiple sources of parametric uncertainty.