15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
NONLINEAR ENERGY-BASED CONTROL METHOD FOR LANDING AUTOPILOT
Rini Akmeliawati* Iven Mareels**
* The Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre
for Aerospace Design Technology - Dept. Mathematics,
RMIT University, GPO Box 2476 V,
Melbourne, 3001 Australia,
rini.akmeliawati@rmit.edu.au
** Dept. Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3010 Australia
i.mareels@unimelb.edu.au

In this paper, an aircraft landing autopilot is designed using the nonlinear energy-based control method (NEM). This method provides the automatic landing by energy management idea. Using NEM the stabilization and tracking can be achieved by modifying the energy functions. The method is illustrated on an automatic landing system problem for a twin-engine civil aircraft, developed by Group for Aeronautical Research and Technology in Europe(GARTEUR). Further we provide physical interpretation of the control laws. A disturbance rejection and robustness analysis is also performed via numbers of simulations at extreme flight conditions. The proposed control laws behave well even under extreme flight conditions.
Keywords: Energy management systems, aerospace control, Lyapunov stability, stability robustness, tracking, nonlinear control system.
Session slot T-Mo-M06: Aircraft Control/Area code 8a : Aerospace