Gain-Scheduled Preview Control for Aircraft Gust Alleviation Using Structured \({{\varvec{H}}}_{\boldsymbol{\infty }}\) Control Design

This paper presents an application of gain-scheduled (GS) control to a gust alleviation system based on the C* control law. The structure integrates a widely used flight maneuver and preview control systems using light detection and ranging. A set of state-space models derived at different flight Mach numbers is used to design the controller. In this study, the controller structure is selected as a linear function of the Mach number, i.e., the control gains are linearly interpolated with the current Mach number. We compare the GS and gain-fixed (GF) controller results at various airspeeds. The simulation result shows that utilizing the preview information improves the gust alleviation performance in GS and GF controls. In addition, the GS controller performs better than the GF controller in tracking the vertical acceleration command as the Mach number reduces.