The FlightControl Library for aircraft control design applications

Abstract

Control of aerial vehicles is a long-standing task during aircraft design and has a large impact on the resulting systems performance. Due to this fact and the ever-increasing complexity and system requirements of today's manned and unmanned aircraft, according synthesis and simulation tools are needed that help to address these challenges. One of the tools that are suited for modeling and simulation of a multidisciplinary aircraft and systems assembly is DLR's FlightDynamics Library, which takes advantage of the capabilities of the Modelica modeling language. In this work, a new augmentation to the library is discussed, which implements a range of common aircraft control concepts in a modular way so that flight guidance and flight control systems can be developed in a flexible way and for multiple aerial platforms, including fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft as well as drones. For this paper, this is showcased at hand of an autoland controller that shall be designed for a high-fidelity 6-DoF fixed-wing aircraft model in Modelica. The combination of aircraft and controller models is subjected to an three step synthesis process, which yields a controller that is robust towards external and internal disturbances.