Longitudinal automatic carrier-landing control law rejecting disturbances and coupling based on adaptive dynamic inversion

The longitudinal automatic carrier landing system (ACLS) control law is designed based on nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI), which can reject air wake, decouple lateral states, and track the dynamic desired touchdown point (DTP). First of all, the nonlinear landing model of F/A−18 aircraft in the final approach is established, in which the parameters of the aerodynamic, control surfaces, and limited states are acquired. Second, the strategy of tracking the desired longitudinal trajectory through pitch angle control is adopted. The automatic power compensation system (APCS), pitch angle rate, pitch angle, and vertical position control loops are developed based on the adaptive NDI. The stable analysis and the principal description are derived in detail. Deck motion compensation (DMC) algorithm is designed by frequency response method. Third, the control parameters are optimized through the genetic algorithm. A fitness function integrated with velocity, angle of attack (AOA), pitch rate, pitch angle, and vertical position of the aircraft are proposed. Finally, integrated simulations are conducted on a semi-physical simulation platform. The results indicate that the adopted automatic landing control law can achieve both excellent performance and the ability to reject the air wake and lateral coupling.