Attitude stabilization of an aircraft via nonlinear optimal control based on aerodynamic data

In this paper, a stabilization problem for an aircraft at a high angle of attack is considered. Though aircrafts obtain large lift force over the high angle of attack regime, nonlinearities of aerodynamics over the regime are considerably high. Using aerodynamic coeffients data given as a table, we design a nonlinear optimal control law to stabilize an existing aircraft at a high angle of attack by a new method based on stable manifold theory. As a result, the nonlinear optimal control law stabilizes attitudes of the aircraft in a larger region than the linear optimal control does.