Development of control laws for the simulation of a new transport aircraft

Abstract

This article presents the development of fly-by-wire control laws used for the high-fidelity simulation of a new transport category aircraft. Beyond structural and gain design aspects for normal operations, envelope protections and limitations as well as mode transition issues are also addressed. As the control system is to be adjusted to changing aircraft datasets at different levels of fidelity, particular emphasis has been put on a high level of automation in gain design and system assessment routines. For lateral dynamics, eigenstructure assignment is used as the design methodology whereas pole placement is used for the pitch axis.