Continuation based control of aircraft dynamics

This paper presents an approach to controlling nonlinear aircraft dynamics over a wide range of parameter variation by incorporating bifurcation analysis and numerical continuation methods into the controller design process. This is a significant improvement over the standard control approach of interpolating between a few design points in the flight envelope. Adaptive control in the form of the minimal control synthesis (MCS) is shown to improve the robustness of the controller in the presence of modelling uncertainties. The above methods are applied to a second-order complex nonlinear highly manoeuvrable aircraft model.