Pilot equalization in manual control of aircraft dynamics

Abstract

In continuous manual control tasks, pilots adapt their control strategy to the dynamics of the controlled element to yield adequate performance of the combined pilot-vehicle system. For a controlled element representing the linearized pitch dynamics of a small jet aircraft, the pilot models described in literature were found to lack the required freedom in the pilot equalization term to accurately model the adopted pilot compensation. An additional lead term in the pilot equalization transfer function was found to significantly increase the accuracy in modeling manual control behavior of aircraft pitch dynamics.