Robust nonlinear aircraft tracking control using synthetic jet actuators

Abstract

A robust, nonlinear tracking control strategy is presented for an aircraft equipped with synthetic jet actuators (SJA). The control law is designed to be easily implementable, requiring no observers, function approximators, or adaptive laws. By exploiting minimal knowledge of the structure of the nonlinear SJA dynamic model, a matrix decomposition technique is exploited to compensate for the input-multiplicative parametric uncertainty inherent in the SJA dynamics. The control law is shown to yield global asymptotic trajectory tracking in the presence of parametric uncertainty, actuator nonlinearity, and unknown, nonlinear external disturbances. A rigorous Lyapunov-based stability analysis is utilized to prove the theoretical result, and numerical simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed control law.