2021 12th International Conference on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Backstepping Control for Asymmetric Fighter Aircraft Executing the High Alpha Herbst Maneuver ‘Anukaran Khanna Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, India e-mail: anukaran bits@gmail.com Abstract—Asymmetrie dynamics of a combat aircraft becomes highly coupled when center-of-gravity (c.) of an aircraft shifts to new position because of either partial wing damage or asymmetric release of store. It becomes difficult for an aireraft to execute high angle mancuvering under asymmetric center- of-gravity shift) as nonlinearity and dynamics get more complex, under such situation implementation of nonlinear control becomes inevitable. In the present study, dynamies is first converted into strict feedback form and then backstepping control scheme is implemented to execute high alpha herbst maneuver under significant lateral center-of- ravi result obtained by the present Study advocates the maneuver performance under lateral asymmetry to be almost similar as that without any asymmetry. packstepping control; F-18 HARV; herbst maneuver; high-alpha Nomenclature— roll, pitch, and yaw body rates par ware bank, light path, and heading angles a angle of attack B sideslip angle Cou, rif, side, and lift force coefficient Cs nC rolling, pitching, and yawing aerodynamic ‘moment coefficient ToTyTe thrust component along body axes MraMrysMrz moment due to thrust along three body axes, position of cg, of asymmetric airerat from ‘nominal c., location KewVeaten 1. IntRopuctioy It is expected from moder generation fighter aircraft to be super maneuverable as well as agile, so that they can easily and successfully perform complex combat mission in extremely challenging circumstances. Fighter aircraft usually carry heavy payload with them housed on both side of fuselage center line beneath the wing. To keep the aircraft symmetry intact payloads are usually fired in pairs However, sometime condition does not demandipermit to release payload in pairs andior sireraft sustain partial wing damage, these inevitable situations result into lateral mass asymmetry and shifts the center-ofgravity (cg.) of an aircraft out of its plane of symmetry to new position [1]. The situation becomes worsen when under such asymmetry (auising because of whatsoever reason partial wing damage, asymmetric release of store, asymmetric fuel consumption 978-1-6654-3320-4/21/831,00 92021 IEEE 363 Bijoy K. Mukherjee Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Birla Institute of Technology and Seience Pilani, India e-mail: bijoy.mukherjee@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in ete.) aircraft has to execute high alpha mancuver posing tough task in front of control engineers, This challenge ‘makes it an important research problem which demands our attention, further work on asymmetric dynamics can be found in the literature but they all are limited to steady level flight conditions for civil aircraft only, very few works in the literature can be traced for an asymmetric aircraft performing demanding maneuver [2-6 In this work backstepping scheme for nonlinear control is implemented to perform high alpha mancuver under significant lateral asymmetry arising because of asymmetric release of onboard stores [7-9] in addition to uncertainty in the aerodynamic coefficient, The rationale behind ‘considering the backstepping design approach is existence ‘of extremely nonlinear dynamics. True to the best of our Knowledge aircraft control via backstepping design executing high alpha challenging maneuver in the presence of lateral mass asymmetry is a novel attempt. However, in the recent literature sliding mode control has been reported ‘but it is backed by chattering problem. In this study, the design method for symmetric dynamics is considered first followed by asymmetric dynamics, thereafter aircraft six degree of freedom dynamics is molded into strict feedback form as per the requirement of backstepping control design. To validate the proposed control scheme, herbst maneuver is taken into consideration. In Herbst maneuver, aircraft frst pitches up and then starts tuming on other side to reverse flight direction within very short duration. The ability to roverse direction within short time with minimum possible radius makes this mancuver most useful in combat. It is deemed as standard maneuver to evaluate the agility and ‘maneuverability of any present generation fighter aircraft [10], The F-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle (HARV) is laken into consideration as. supermaneuverable aircraft because of its high angle-of attack database available in ‘open domain [11]. The aircraft taken into consideration for validation purpose believed to have elevator, aileron, rudder, pitch thrust vector and yaw thrust vector as the ‘control effectors and all of them are position and rate constrained with a first oder dynamics. ‘The remaining part of this paper are structured as! Section II illustrates the control design and formulation for symmetric aircraft in detail followed by simulation results, Section Ill describes the control formulation under lateral ‘mass asymmetry and the simulation result oblained arecompared with that of symmetric case. At last, conclusions are offered in section TV. Il, BACKSTEPPING CONTROL FOR SYMMETRIC DYNAMIcs Firstly, controller for symmetric aircraft is designed. To execute herbst maneuver, sideslip angle is fixed to zero for entire maneuver duration, whereas a suitable bell shape profile is considered for desired angle of attack and bank angle profile. The primary sim of the controller is to make the state variables [a, 8, 4) track the commanded trajectory fa‘, pS, 4]. The designed controller computes the momenis about the three axes necessary to match the desired profiles, The computed moments are then allocated among the available control surfaces via standard. pseudoinverse control allocation algorithm ‘Throttle is controlled in open loop manner. It is assumed that all the actuators have first order dynamics and position and rate limits as given in Table T. The complete model of applied control scheme is shown in fig. | whercas the applied backstepping control scheme is shown in fig.2. vg B | |e - whe sf conmot | |. fs) Actuator Six Degree |, [ Contotler Entecor | Dynamics ofFreedom | _') Allocation y ¥ com y Figure 1. Model of i _@-4 8) Figure 2 lock diagram of backstepping Control Scheme The wind axes [12], rotational kinematics and dynamics equations for the aircraft can be rearranged as follows, omy |B poner spb ana ¥8C, a Sfomtin 935 6B noe 5-Tenein Cg fn Pst AAT tne aSC.,) : “aie . (0 7205) SSE am sn rte i 7 conan ose applied Control Scheme (y-Le ar Dept J!) Ce tader het? =p )-10,7 +] M, Un Iy Pa tear | M1.) 2 where, In 4 es M,) M, m,| [PCy Boy M,] [F8HCiey FHCg. FHC, 0 M, 0 Buy, OAT M, |, [Cre WHC ° Let us define the state and the control inputs as x, =[a, 2.4) .x =[prqerjand w=I"\M.M,M,E. So that 64[MAM = With the choices of x;,x,and W the flight dynamics equations (1) and (2) reduces to strict feedback form as follows: R= AO)+hOde e = AGltw Let us introduce the error state variables e, and follows: é 6) ad 6) where xf and xf are the desired trajectories of x; and x5 The dynamic equations of the error states are given as follows: o To improve steady state performance, an integral term is added to the standard Lyapunoy function for the x; dynamics assuming x, to be the virtual control as @ =) —4f' = KO) + hm — sf % re lor atzala 8 eet yates @) 2 afd wih where g, yeing a constant symmetric positive definite matrix. atet PU + fH 1+ 81 Kise, Let us choose fs fury =i =-Kyg King) where Ki isa constant positive definite matrix, Fee Rye Kae tat & ane Kye, ER + BR me? Kye, <0 Now, from (9), fx, From her Kye Kas tit — fi the desired value of x is obtained as x8 =U" Ki Ki fadt +f — fi) (a9) Even if f becomes momentarily singular it will only lead to momentary high control demand and hence ‘momentary saturation in the control defection The Lyapunov function for the complete dynamics is chosen as dete ed et, zie tzeie ay 365 Kn Jepdt . Kxy being a constant symmetric positive definite matrix. talineclantalis Ui + Sax — if! 1+ gi Kine, +e es +83 Key SEU t free + Ged iH M4 gf Ke +2 Substituting (10) inthe above, TIX + fer Kue Kasi + K-K- Me SI K 6 Heres +81 K nes +0 ka TABLE L SATURATION LEVEL AND BANDWIDTH OF CONTROL EIFECTORS Position imit | Ratetimit | Bandwidth Aileron 6.) 35 dog tion degs | 1002 levator) | + 10dep, | 40dees | 10.02 280g Rudder (6) 0 dog s2éeis | 100k Pitch Nozzle 20 deg s0deys | 00H Guo) Yaw Nozte | 20 eg stodegs | 100K Gu) TABLE ML ConTROL=R PARAMETERS kK sig 10.18) Ky | disglo10101) Ky éag{t 102) Ka | aagiot0i 0 anal Kye fog They + BR ae + ey + 8K ne Let us choose &, =—Kyye» —Keasts — Ae, where Ka, is a constant positive definite matrix Vy =e! Kye + PAG ~ er" Kyey- TR ee. BRE + Rae, Ky et Kye <0 a2) Now from (12), ‘fed — fle +id fytu=-Kye—Kh fed fle, +i== fy—Kayey— Kin [endt— fie, +59 (13) Equation (13) gives the final control input where xf is siven by (10), For numerical simulation total maneuver duration of 2isee initiating at {=3see is taken into consideration with the condition that airraft is fiying at its intial steady level trim at an altitude of 2000m with velocity of 150m. Fig. 3 depicts the state and control time response for hetbst maneuver. From fig. 3 it can be scen that the closed loop performance forthe Herbst maneuver is very good with the flight direction changing exactly by 180" within 260m radius and excellent tracking performance is achieved as the desired and commanded angle of attack and bank angle profiles are overlapping. To enhance the thrust vector control power about 50% increase in throttle is applied in an open loop fashion. Controller parameters appearing in Eqs. (10) and (13) ate set by tial and error and are shown in Table I. r fade TAMIL oat ri lt | i gl Figure 3 Herbst manewer response in symmetric dynamics IIL, BACKSTHPPING CONTROL FOR ASYMMETRIC Dynamics In this section the backstepping control modeling is extended to a eg, shifted asymmetric aircraft. As already discussed there can be multiple reasons for an aircraft to ‘experience asymmetry such as wing damage and/or asymmetric release of onboard stores ete. Here in our present work we are considering asymmetric firing of ‘onboard stores for the cause of asymmetry. Ifthe shifted c.g position is at [Xin Yom Zon)" from the nominal reference point in the plane of symmetry. then the force and moment balance equation is given by [13-14] 10 00 ey eu I O10 Hey ae H § ee 0 -Wsem tyne be 0m’ Ly a a maw =n pw -pre au Tgp Oy Tegan Tyr tL 7) | Tar HU, Mey gpa st?) Tarp (leg —Tiy)Pa~ Haar Tg D4") DP Vag — PVog — Pow (CFP Wg PB Tee (P+ Yeu Phan Fem | 8G PV 4 PHY Mi p04 ig + HUB} i pwr) 5ag + GW =P Pn ~esind geos@sing geosdeosy A g's C08 sin #+ Yq’ Be05 C055 ~2it’g sin 8 X,yn'g 00506059 Yel 4508+ gn’ cO5O SING (aay ‘where m' and "| are mass and inertia matrix of the aircraft after the release of onboard stores; and [F, F, F.J! and [My M, M,)' are external force and moment vectors acting on asymmetric sircrafl consisting of aerodynamic and propulsive components. I is important to note here that like the gravitational force, there also exist a moment due to 566szavity term asthe cg. of aircraft is away from the origin of the body frame From the above nonlinear coupled equations, the rotational dynamics part can be modeled in an adchoe manner by simply adding to the extemal moments, the corresponding moment due to the gravity (along the three body axes) in the standard symmetric 6-DOF equations of motion. Unlike the exact model, as expressed in Ea. (14), this ad-hoc model does not add any further complexity of nonlinearity to the existing 6-DOF equations of motion. as, where, as stated earlier, [M, My M,]". and [M, My M,]", ie conttol and state dependent parts of the extemal moment With, = Ne -, t aly My he ew Le The rotational kinematic equation remains unchanged under e.g. asymmetry as given by (1). Its easy to observe that (1) and (15) are inthe same form as (3) and (4) with the J term being more complex. Hence, the control design ‘method and stability proof remain same. In case of asymmetric condition to carry out numerical simulation, itis assumed that aircraft is flying at an altitude of 2000m with velocity of 150m/s as in previous case and carrying a pair of identical stores of 800 Kg housed on both side from fuselage centerline first releases one store and then starts maneuvering, The remaining store affixed with aireraft is located laterally at one third of the semi-span which is about 19m and at 0.45m vertically downward from the nominal reference point in the plane of symmety. ‘Throttle is applied in an open loop fashion same as in previous section, We first evaluated the effectiveness of maneuver performance with the symmetric backstepping controller, as, discussed in previous section, the same controller is then applied to the asymmetric case, and its result are shown in fig. 4 Deterioration in the maneuver performance is easily noticeable in the fig. 4 (blue line represent the asymmetric cease whereas red one represents symmetric). For same set of condition, the maneuver performance become more worsen. for lighter aircraft as the e.g. variation would be more in ‘that case, The above reason stvongly supports our logic to make use of asymmetric dynamics for formulation of control design which is discussed in this section. The effectiveness of the asymmetric controller is then compared with that of the symmetric controller under the above ‘mentioned lateral c.g. variation. From the analysis of fig. 4 it can be concluded that the desired maneuver performance S67 ‘can be achieved using the asymmetric backstepping control scheme, IV, Conctusion Backstepping control design approach is utilized to ‘execute the herbst maneuver under nominal e.g. position as well as laterally shifted c.g. position. In both the cases dynamies are first molded into strict feedback form. However, it was found that controller designed considering ‘dynamics for symmetricinominal c.g. position suffers from performance degradation when the same is extended to laterally shifted e.g. position, When contoller design modified taking asymmetric dynamics into account the nominal performance is recovered back. In both symmetric as well as asymmetric case, the maneuver performance is, validated against =10% uncertainty in acrodynamic data There is scope for more exploration to extend the present work to other complex maneuvers with robustness enhancement scheme combined with backstepping control ‘scheme to handle higher level of uncertainty. fol ia {ur ae Ehec| Poe PoeVA tieteec) sine02) Figure 4, Comparison oferbst maneuver response unde tera shit Siestip salt deo) APPENDIX “Aircraft Data Mass (mm 26100 ky, Length () 17.06 m ‘Wingspan (b): 140m, ‘Wing area (S): 37.16 Mean chord (@): 331m Roll-axis inertia (): Pitch-axis inertia (I): ‘Yaw-axis inertia (1) X-Z.axis Product of inertia (1. 3.089 « 10° ke mi? 2,396 * 10° kgm? 2.599 « 10° kgm” -3.1243%10" kg REFERENCES: [1] Murs, BK, and Sinha, M, "Large Angle Mancovring with an Asjmmetic Alora A” Stigle Loop Conta!” Formulation", Proceedings of the Guidance, Navigation, and Canto Conference ‘Plorida, USA, 08-12 January 2018, ‘Bacon, BJ.atd. 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