Design of a modern pitch pointing control system

The development of a pitch pointing control system for an advanced high performance fighter aircraft using eigenstructure assignment and command generator tracking schemes is presented. A desired eigenstructure is first chosen to achieve a desired decoupling (i.e., pitch attitude and flight path angle), and to obtain a desired damping and rise time. The command generator tracker is next used to ensure zero steady-state error-to-step commands. The stability robustness to the parameter variations of the closed-loop system is evaluated in the sense of the conditioning of the achieved eigenstructure by using singular value analysis technique. The analysis and synthesis techniques for the pitch pointing control system are illustrated by applying the techniques to F-15 aircraft as a part of the NASA/USAF program named ACTIVE (Advanced Controls for integrated Vehicles)