Adaptive Flight Control System for Flight Safety Improvement in Reentry and Other High-Velocity Vehicles

An adaptive controller and a nonlinear rate limiter are presented in order to improve the flight safety of manually controlled reentry vehicles and supersonic transport (SST) aircraft. The adaptive controller is based on the principle of dynamic inversion. The calculation of the controller parameters corresponding to the aerodynamic coefficients of the vehicle was carried out by a proposed online identification procedure. The effectiveness of the adaptive controller was tested through a set of experiments performed using a ground-based simulator. The obtained results were used to estimate the probability of an accident due to pilot error for the basic Space Shuttle flight control system and for its improved version with the adaptive controller. It was found that using the adaptive controller causes high required rates of elevon deflection. Because of the actuator's rate limiting, this is a source of pilot-induced oscillations. To counteract these oscillations in the pilot-vehicle closed loop system, an adaptive nonlinear rate limiter is introduced. The effectiveness of using the adaptive prefilter for improving the flight safety and flying qualities of the Space Shuttle reentry vehicle and an SST was demonstrated in experiments involving a ground-based simulator.