Automatic control of an aircraft employing outboard horizontal stabilizers

This dissertation concerns the study of radio-operated control of an aircraft using fixed gain and adaptive controllers. The real-time feedback control system is developed to enhance the flying qualities of an experimental model aircraft. The non-conventional flight dynamics of the Outboard Horizontal Stabilizer (OHS) aircraft cause significant differences in the piloting of the aircraft. The control system was added to augment stability as well as to adjust the flight characteristics so that the OHS aircraft handles similar to a conventional aircraft.; The control system design process, as applied to recent innovations in aircraft design, is followed. The Outboard Horizontal Stabilizer concept is a non-conventional aircraft, designed to take advantage of the normally wasted energy developed by the wing tip vortices.; The research is based on a remotely-controlled OHS aircraft fitted with various sensors and telemetry as part of a real time feedback control system. Fixed gain Linear Quadratic controllers are first applied to the aircraft and result in a dramatic increase in performance at a nominal operating condition. Non-linearities in the OHS aircraft behavior and a wide operating range demanded the development of a variable gain adaptive controller utilizing a parameter estimation scheme to model the plant. The adaptive LQR gain-scheduled controller that emerged gave good performance over a wide flight envelope.