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A Model Reference Adaptive Controller Performance of an Aircraft Roll

Attitude Control System

Conference Paper · December 2015

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 Recent Advances on Systems, Signals, Control, Communications and Computers

A Model Reference Adaptive Controller Performance of an Aircraft

Roll Attitude Control System
HAKAN KORUL*1, DEMET CANPOLAT TOSUN2, YASEMIN ISIK3,
Avionics Department
Anadolu University,
Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 26470, Eskisehir
TURKEY
* [email protected]; [email protected];[email protected]
1 2

Abstract:- As the complexity of aircrafts increase, classical methods become unsatisfactory to yield acceptable
performance and come to its limits when controllers for MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output) systems with high
internal coupling are to be designed. For a higher-number passenger aircraft or a new supersonic commercial
transport, powerful and robust techniques are required. There are numerous studies regarding flight control in
the literature. In this study, the results of a model reference adaptive controller for the roll attitude control
system is evaluated for a very large four engine passenger jet aircraft in a MATLAB coded program.

Key-Words: - Aircraft, flight control, roll attitude, adaptive control, model reference adaptive control

1 Introduction that of conventional systems. Furthermore, the so-

Flight control is an interesting and technically called "family" concept can be introduced. Flying
challenging subject for which a wide range of different aircraft can be made almost the same for
engineering disciplines have to align their skills and pilots, by making appropriate adjustments in the
efforts, in order to establish a successful system flight control laws. As a result, different aircraft
design. Ambitious aircraft programs and the hard "feel" almost the same, therefore helping to reduce
competition between aircraft manufacturers pilot training costs. Most importantly, modern FCS
motivate sustained striving towards Flight Control have contributed to improved dynamical behavior.
Systems (FCSs), which provide improved Certain military aircraft cannot be flown without a
performance and towards a more efficient stability augmentation system. The open loop
development process. The FCS is a flight-critical instability, which is related to agility of the aircraft,
system which must be available for the aircraft to is utilized to obtain better performance and
fly safely. The regulation requirements relating to maneuverability of the closed-loop system. For civil
stability, control and handling qualities are not very aircraft, performance can be increased by
specific. Therefore, each manufacturer develops its application of active systems, for example to
own proprietary design requirements and criteria, provide gust suppression and auto-trimming, in
often making use of the more specific military order to achieve improved ride quality [3].
design specifications and guidelines [1]. There are numerous studies regarding flight control
As the complexity of aircrafts increase, classical in the literature such as adaptive control [4,5,6,7,8],
methods become unsatisfactory to yield acceptable µ synthesis control [9, 10], H∞ control [11,12], multi
performance [2] and come to its limits when model control [13,14], neural control [15,16,17],
controllers for Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) adaptive neural control [18,19,20], gain scheduling
systems with high internal coupling are to be control [21, 22], control system with a genetic
designed. For a higher-number passenger aircraft or algorithm optimization process [23,24,25] and
a new supersonic commercial transport, powerful fuzzy control [26,27].
and robust techniques are required.
The use of modern FCS can be beneficial from an 2 Model Reference Adaptive Control
economic point of view. For certain types of The term adaptive system has a variety of specific
aircraft, fuel consumption can be reduced by meanings, but it usually implies that the system is
allowing relaxed static stability, counteracted by the capable of accommodating unpredictable
application of active control. Another advantage disturbances, whether these disturbances arise
related to fuel consumption is that for large aircraft within the system or external to it.
the weight of Fly by Wire systems is smaller than

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 Recent Advances on Systems, Signals, Control, Communications and Computers

An adaptive controller is thus, a controller that can The most common methods are the Massachusetts
modify its behavior in response to changes in the Institute of Technology (MIT) rule and Lyapunov
dynamics of the plant and the character of the stability theory [30].
disturbances. The basic objective adaptive controller
is to maintain a consistent performance of a system
in the presence of uncertainty or unknown variation
in the plant parameters, which may occur due to
non-linear actuators, changes in the operating
conditions of the plant and non-satisfactory
disturbances acting on the plant [28].
Model reference adaptive control is a control
technique which is used to design the adaptive
controller that adjusts the controller parameters so
that the output of the actual plant tracks the output
Fig.1 Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) block
of a reference model having the same reference
diagram [31]*
input [29].
There are three components in the model reference
MIT Rule: MIT rule was first developed in 1960 by
adaptive control system:
the researchers of MIT and used to design the
Reference model: It models the desired behavior of
autopilot system for aircrafts. MIT rule can be used
closed-loop system. In this study, the reference
to design a controller with MRAC scheme for any
model is a transfer function. The system
system [29].
specifications of the reference transfer function are
In this rule, a cost function is defined as,
as shown in the Table 1. (1)
Table 1 The system specifications of the reference model
where e is the error between the outputs of plant and
the model, and Φ is the adjustable parameter.
Rise Time 0.413sec Parameter Φ is adjusted in such a fashion so that the
Settling Time 0.706sec cost function can be minimized to zero. For this
Steady State Error 0 reason, the change in the parameter Φ is kept in the
direction of the negative gradient of J, that is
Controller: The goal of this part is to keep initial
plant condition in mind and to achieve overall (2)
stability. In this work, only one parameter roll angle,
Φ, is used to describe the control law. The value of
Φ is primarily dependent on learning rate.
where, the partial derivative term is called as the
Adjustment mechanism: This part changes its sensitivity derivative of the system. This term
output based on error between plant output and the indicates how the error is changing with respect to
reference model output. How fast it can change its the parameter Φ and Equation 2 describes the
output, faster it can adapt to any changes in plant. change in the parameter Φ with respect to time so
This fastness depends on a parameter called learning that the cost function J(Φ) can be reduced to zero.
rate (γ). Choosing the learning rate too high can Here γ is a positive quantity which indicates the
cause side effects like unstability. learning rate of the controller [29].
There are several methods which are used in
adjustment mechanism as 3 Aircraft Roll Attitude Control
• The MIT rule System
• Lyapunov stability theory Aircraft roll attitude control system is shown in
• Design of Model Reference Adaptive Figure 2. It can be seen from the figure that V(s) at
System (MRAS) based on Lyapunov
stability theory
• Hyperstability and passivity theory
• The error model
• Augmented error
• A model-following MRAS.

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 Recent Advances on Systems, Signals, Control, Communications and Computers

Fig.2 Roll attitude control system

the output of the controller is calculated such that

the Φ follows the desired value Φd .

The proposed adaptive controller are applied to a

very large four engine passenger jet aircraft data.
The flight parameters of selected aircraft are height
12200 m, Mach no 0.8, the dynamic pressure ( q )
9911 Nm-2. Also in Figure 1, aircraft dynamic for
this flight condition is given in Equation 1 [32]. p
and δ A shows the roll angular velocity and aileron
deflections respectively.
p(s) 0.14
=
δA (s) s + 0.56 (1) Fig. 4 The step response of the roll control system for γ=3

4 Simulation Results
In this part, the simulation results for the roll
attitude control system are discussed. The step
responses of the model reference adaptive control
system for roll angle are shown in the Figures 3-5.
The results are for different learning rates. The
learning rates, γ are chosen 1, 3 and 5 respectively.

Fig. 5 The step response of the roll control system for γ=5

5 Conclusion
In this paper, the design of a model reference
adaptive controller for the aircraft roll attitude
control system is analyzed and the results for an
aircraft are evaluated in a MATLAB coded
program. As shown in simulation results, the
Fig. 3 The step response of the roll control system for γ=1 different learning rate values changes the
system response. For high values of γ system
responses fast with larger overshoots, and for

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 Recent Advances on Systems, Signals, Control, Communications and Computers

small values of γ system responses slow with Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol.345,
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