2012 IEEE International Conference on Control Applications (CCA)
Part of 2012 IEEE Multi-Conference on Systems and Control
October 3-5, 2012. Dubrovnik, Croatia
Adaptive LFT control of a transport aircraft on the lateral axis
Simon Oudin, Gilles Ferreres, Guilhem Puyou and Philippe Mouyon
Abstract— This paper describes the application of an indirect
LFT (Linear Fractional Transformation) -based adaptive con-
trol scheme to a rigid transport aircraft, with emphasis on the
lateral axis. The plant parameters, namely the stability deriva-
tives, are estimated online using a Recursive Least Squares
technique. A modal approach is used to directly synthesize the
static output feedback LFT controller, scheduled as a function
of the parameters to be estimated, in order to reduce the
online computational time and complexity. The study of the
stability and H∞ / L2 performance of the adaptive closed loop
is performed by the analysis of an LFT gain-scheduled closed
loop which depends on the true values of the plant parameters
and on the estimation error. Using this offline method, based
on µ analysis, the adaptive aircraft control scheme is shown
to be robust with respect to a large transient and asymptotic
estimation error, as confirmed by time-domain results on a
nonlinear six degree-of-freedom simulator.
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the A320, Airbus aircraft are piloted through an
Electrical Flight Control System (EFCS), which has enabled
the introduction of enhanced control laws to make the
piloting task safer (flight envelope1 protections) and usually
easier (augmented stability, homogeneous response of the
aircraft through the flight envelope). However, these sophisti-
cated laws require basic information to provide this level of
assistance: aircraft aerodynamics and inertia characteristics
or sensor measurements (e.g. airspeed, Mach number, etc.)
to schedule the flight control law gains throughout the flight
envelope.
To cover the loss of scheduling information, the current
industrial approach considers robust reconfigurations, with
three levels of control law in the Airbus EFCS. Normal
Law, where gains are scheduled on the flight point2 , gives
the optimal performance with all flight envelope protections.
Alternate Law has different categories of reconfiguration
depending on the failing sensors or functions. Most pro-
tections are lost or weaker. Direct Law is the last level of
Simon Oudin is a PhD student with the Stability and Control Department,
Airbus Operations S.A.S., 316 route de Bayonne, F31060 TOULOUSE
Cedex 9, France simon.oudin@airbus.com
Gilles Ferreres is with the System Control and Flight Dynam-
ics Department, ONERA, BP 74025, F31055 Toulouse Cedex, France
ferreres@onera.fr
Guilhem Puyou is with the Stability and Control Department, Airbus
Operations S.A.S., 316 route de Bayonne, F31060 TOULOUSE Cedex 9,
France guilhem.puyou@airbus.com
Philippe Mouyon is with the System Control and Flight Dynam-
ics Department, ONERA, BP 74025, F31055 Toulouse Cedex, France
mouyon@onera.fr
1 Flight envelope is described by a combination of airspeed, Mach number,
aircraft weight, high-lift device (also called Flaps) deflections, position of
the center of gravity. Every aircraft has a flight envelope for which it has
received certification.
2 A flight point is a state of equilibrium in the flight envelope.
978-1-4673-4505-7/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
reconfiguration (using fixed gains), having no protections and
an almost direct relationship between sidestick order and
actuator deflection. Notably, the airplane handling qualities
are degraded after a reconfiguration, which increases the pilot
workload even though the aircraft is still safe to fly. Recent
developments in structured H∞ design for multiple plants
([1], [2]) allow an efficient tuning of robust control laws, but
some performance degradation is unavoidable.
To improve it, adaptive control theory provides several
methods, e.g. L1 adaptive control [3]. It was successfully
applied to non-linear aircraft simulators [4] or even subscale
aircraft [5]. Although good results were obtained (mainly
in the longitudinal case), applications dedicated to manual
handling rely on high-frequency updates of the L1 controller
which are unavailable on most modern transport aircraft with
limited CPU capabilities.
Without any knowledge of the flight point, the aim of
this article is to design a flight control law on the lateral
axis for an easier manual handling of the aircraft. In a
practical case, this type of law is naturally robust to any
loss of scheduling information (e.g. airspeed, Mach number,
etc. for the lateral case) and robust to large uncertainties on
the aircraft aerodynamics.
In this context an indirect adaptive control scheme was
first proposed in [6] for linear SIMO systems, where the
plant parameters are estimated online (using Recursive Least
Squares without extra excitation) and the controller gains are
adjusted as functions of these estimates. LFT (Linear Frac-
tional Transformation) techniques are used for both controller
design and closed-loop performance analysis. This paper
extends these principles to MIMO control towards a realistic
six degree-of-freedom Airbus simulator implementation.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces
notation and presents the principle of the adaptive control
technique. Sections III deals with the techniques used for
identification, control design and closed-loop validation. Sec-
tion IV presents the numerical application to the non-linear
Airbus simulator. Concluding remarks end the paper.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
A. Aircraft model description
Consider a generalized flight dynamics lateral model of
a rigid transport aircraft, with actuators and sensors, and a
set of constants Θ ∈ Rk characterizing the aircraft around a
given equilibrium (i.e. flight point):
ẋ = f (x, u, Θ), u̇ = fa (u, uc ), ẏ = fs (y, x, u) (1)
T
where x = [β, p, r, φ] is the flight dynamics state vector and
β, p, r, φ are angle of sideslip, roll rate, yaw rate, and roll
1534
angle, respectively. u = [dr, dp]T is the aircraft input vector
of rudder and aileron deflections and uc = [drc , dpc ]T is the
input vector of commanded deflections to be achieved by the
actuators; y ∈ R4 contains filtered measurements of the state
vector.
The deflections and deflection rates of the actuator are
assumed to be bounded: for i = 1, 2, |ui | ≤ l1 , |u̇i | ≤ l2 .
B. Adaptive LFT control principle
The issue is to adaptively control a linear3 plant P (s, θ, θ̄),
where the time-invariant (LTI) vector θ (resp. θ̄) of unknown
main parameters (resp. secondary parameters) is assumed to
belong to an a priori given set Ωθ (resp. Ωθ̄ ). Let Θ =
[θ; θ̄] be the concatenated vector of unknown parameters.
The following proposition explains how to combine gain-
scheduling and robustness techniques into an adaptive control
scheme with guaranteed properties [6].
Proposition 1: Let a gain-scheduled controller K(s, θ) be
synthesized off-line, which ensures stability and performance
properties for the interconnection of P (s, θ, θ̄) with K(s, θ)
for all (θ, θ̄) ∈ Ωθ × Ωθ̄ , where θ, θ̄ correspond to LTI
parameters.
Let L(s, θ, θ̄, δθ) be the interconnection of P (s, θ, θ̄) with
K(s, θ + δθ), where δθ is an error on the vector θ of
scheduling parameters, and let Ωδθ be a set for which robust
stability of L(s, θ, θ̄, δθ) is guaranteed for all LTI (θ, θ̄) ∈
Ωθ × Ωθ̄ and all time-varying (LTV) δθ(t) ∈ Ωδθ .
Consider the adaptive closed loop obtained by intercon-
necting P (s, θ, θ̄) with K(s, θ̂(t)), where θ̂(t) is an online
estimate of θ. If (θ, θ̄) ∈ Ωθ × Ωθ̄ and the estimation error
δθ(t) = θ̂(t) − θ stays inside Ωδθ , then the adaptive closed
loop is stable.
Limiting the dependency of the gain-scheduled controller
only to the main parameters θ has a two-fold interest. Firstly,
the complexity of the controller w.r.t the plant parameters is
reduced, thus the online computation of all scheduled gains
is down to a minimum. Secondly, even if the secondary
parameters are also estimated online, the induced estimation
errors δ θ̄(t) = θ̄ˆ(t) − θ̄ have no consequences on the values
of the controller gains and thus on the overall closed-loop
performance.
Proposition 1 deals with robust stability, however aero-
nautical applications rather seek robust performance. The
principle remains the same, i.e. if the estimation error is
small enough, robust performance can be ensured. It is
worth emphasizing that a perfect estimation of all unknown
parameters (δθ(t) = δ θ̄(t) = 0) is not required, only a good
closed-loop performance is needed.
Also, a key aspect for online estimation and therefore for
online adaptive control is to ensure a good robustness of the
scheme to unmeasured disturbances which can dramatically
degrade the performance (or even stability).
3 The principle is explained for linear plants even if the presented
application deals with a full non-linear system.
1535
III. METHODS AND TOOLS FOR
IDENTIFICATION, CONTROLLER DESIGN AND
CLOSED-LOOP VALIDATION
A. Principle of Recursive Least-Squares (RLS)
Consider the following generic problem of estimating the
vector Θ of unknown constant parameters, which satisfy the
equalities for t ∈ [1, N ]:
Y (t) = ΘT Φ(t) + v(t) (2)
The signal Y (t) and the regressor Φ(t) are known, whereas
v(t) is an unknown disturbance. The Least-Square
P (LS)
estimate Θ̂ of Θ minimizes the quantity t=1...N kY (t) −
ΘT Φ(t)k2 and it can be recursively computed. At time
t, when new values Y (t) and Φ(t) are received, the RLS
estimate Θ̂(t) is updated as follows:
Pe (t − 1)Φ(t)
Ke (t) = (3)
1 + ΦT (t)Pe (t − 1)Φ(t)
Pe (t) = Pe (t − 1) − Ke (t)ΦT (t)Pe (t − 1) (4)
ǫ(t) = T
Y (t) − Φ (t) Θ̂(t − 1) (5)
Θ̂(t) = Θ̂(t − 1) + Ke (t)ǫ(t) (6)
where Θ̂(t) and the matrix Pe (t) > 0 need to be initialized
at t = 0.
B. Identification of a linearized model
Consider the following linearized plant:
∀t ≥ 0, ẋ(t) = A(Θ) x(t) + B(Θ) u(t) (7)
Assumption: both state vector x and input vector u are
supposed to be measured. Matrices A(Θ) and B(Θ) are
linear with respect to (w.r.t) Θ, which is a vector of LTI
unknown stability derivatives.
The aim is to provide an online estimate of Θ using (7).
Since ẋ is not available as such in practice, filtered signals
s 1 1
are used. Let x˙f = D(s) x, xf = D(s) x and uf = D(s) u,
2
where D(s) = (1 + s/wf ) . Since Θ is LTI, equation (7)
yields:
∀t ∈ [1, N ], x˙f (t) = A(Θ) xf (t) + B(Θ) uf (t) (8)
which is still linear w.r.t Θ, so that (8) can be written
under the form of (2). The RLS algorithm (3)-(6) enables
an efficient online computation of an estimate Θ̂(t) of Θ.
C. Modal design of the LFT controller
Let G(s, θ) be the plant used for the controller design,
where θ is a vector of unknown parameters to be estimated.
It can be put under the standard LFT form G(s, θ) =
Fu (H(s), ∆θ ), where the transfer matrix H(s) is fixed and
∆θ = diag(θi Iqi ), i.e. each parameter θi is repeated qi times
on the diagonal of ∆θ .
The following Lemma ([7]) explains how to produce a
static LFT gain K(θ), noting that all θ-dependent quantities
in the Lemma are supposed to be under an LFT form.
Lemma 1: Let (A(θ), B(θ), C(θ), D(θ)) be a state-space
representation of G(s, θ) of order n. Assume that m closed
loop eigenvalues λi (θ) are to be placed. Let a static output
feedback gain K(θ) satisfy the equality:
 
  V (θ)
K(θ) C(θ) D(θ) = W (θ) (9)
W (θ)
where V (θ) = [v1 (θ) . . . vm (θ)] and W (θ) = matrices satisfying D2 ∆δ = ∆δ D2 and G2 ∆δ = ∆∗δ G2
[w1 (θ) . . . wm (θ)]. Each pair of vectors vi (θ) and wi (θ)
must satisfy:
 
  vi (θ)
A(θ) − λi (θ)I B(θ) =0 (10)
wi (θ)
Then, the interconnection of G(s, θ) with K(θ) has m placed
eigenvalues λi (θ) and n − m unplaced eigenvalues.
After the design, two points require attention. Firstly, the
well-posedness radius of the LFT gain K(θ) is to be checked,
as described in [8]. Secondly, if m < n in Lemma 1, only the
main eigenvalues are placed in closed loop, thus the stability
of the LFT plant interconnected with the LFT controller must
be verified afterwards.
D. Validation of the LFT closed loop with robustness tools
W.r.t to the aircraft application, a linearized version
P (s, θ, θ̄) of the system is considered. Using e.g. the LFR
Toolbox [8], interconnecting the plant model P (s, Θ) where
Θ = [θ; θ̄] with the gain-scheduled controller K(s, θ + δθ) is
an easy task, once the model and the controller are under an
LFT form. The LFT closed loop of figure 1 is obtained, with
∆Θ = diag(Θi Iri ) and ∆δ = diag(δθi Isi ). From now on,
Fu (N (s), diag(∆Θ , ∆δ )) denotes the upper-interconnexion
of N (s) with the diagonal blocks ∆Θ and ∆δ .
Assumption: the parameters Θi are supposed to be nor-
malized in this section (i.e. −1 ≤ Θi ≤ 1 for all i).
Normalization of an LFT form parameters is easily achieved
with the LFR Toolbox. Thus the plant parameters Θ belong
to the unit hypercube HΘ . Let k be a fixed positive value and
assume that the estimation error δθ belongs to the hypercube
kHδ , where Hδ is the unit hypercube of corresponding size.
The aim of the following proposition is to study a robust
H∞ / L2 performance property between the exogenous input
d, corresponding to a reference signal or to an unmeasured
disturbance, and a relevant output p.
Proposition 2: The issue is to compute a guaranteed ro-
bust performance level γ, for which:
kFu (N (s), diag(∆Θ , ∆δ ))kiL2 ≤ γ, ∀Θ ∈ HΘ , δθ ∈ kHδ
(11)
∆δ
∆Θ
N (s)
d p
Fig. 1. Interconnection structure for the validation of the adaptive control
scheme
1536
Let D1 (ω) = D1∗ (ω) > 0 and G1 (ω) = G∗1 (ω) be frequency-
dependent scaling matrices satisfying D1 (ω)∆Θ =
∆Θ D1 (ω) and G1 (ω)∆Θ = ∆∗Θ G1 (ω) for all structured
∆Θ .
Let D2 = D2T > 0 and G2 = GT2 be constant scaling
for all structured ∆δ .
I I
Let P (s) = diag(In1 , nk2 , nγ3 )N (s), where n1 (resp. n2 ) is
the size of ∆Θ (resp. ∆δ ) and n3 is the size of the I/O d
and p.
A sufficient condition for (11) to hold is that there exist
scaling matrices D(ω) = diag(D1 (ω), D2 , I) and G(ω) =
diag(G1 (ω), G2 , 0) satisfying ∀ω:
P ∗ (jω)D(ω)P (jω)+j [G(ω)P (jω) − P ∗ (jω)G(ω)] ≤ D(ω)
(12)
In the above proposition, the issue is to study the transient
performance properties of the adaptive closed loop, since the
time-varying estimation error δθ is associated to constant
D2 , G2 scalings while the vector Θ of LTI parameters is
associated to frequency-dependent D1 , G1 scalings. This
proposition can easily be adapted to the study of asymptotic
performance properties, by considering an LTI estimation
error δθ associated to frequency-dependent D2 , G2 scalings.
The reader should refer to [9], [10] for more details and
for numerical application of Proposition 2.
IV. NUMERICAL EXAMPLE: CIVIL TRANSPORT
AIRCRAFT
This section gives a practical application to the presented
theorical components, with the design and validation of a
lateral flight control law which uses only traditional outputs
for feedback, namely attitude angles β, φ and angular rates
p, r (provided by gyroscopes), without the need of any other
sensor information for scheduling. As mentionned before,
the current Airbus flight control laws use additional sensor
measurements (e.g. airspeed, Mach number, etc.) to schedule
the control law gains throughout the aircraft flight envelope.
The presented approach differs significantly in the sense that
the controller gains, which are LFT forms, are scheduled w.r.t
the plant stability derivatives, i.e. the open-loop aircraft state-
space coefficients in (A, B, C, D). The controller design
is performed on a simplified aircraft model using an LFT
modal placement approach (see section IV-B). Since stability
derivative values are not available online, an RLS estimator
provides real-time estimates of them. The estimator is fed
only by traditional aircraft outputs and actuator deflections
(see section IV-A), thus avoiding totally the dependency
w.r.t additional information while maintaining a good per-
formance throughout the flight envelope. Of course, stability
and more generally performance of the closed loop depend
on the amount of estimation error at a given time. A the-
oretical analysis (see section IV-C) shows that time-varying
estimation errors of large amplitude don’t compromise the
closed-loop response for a continuous set of aircraft plants
(i.e. for a large domain of the flight envelope).
A. Identification of a structured aircraft plant applications [12]: only the open-loop poles of G̃(s, θ) are
With respect to (7), consider the following linearized placed in closed loop6 , chosen close to the open-loop ones
lateral aircraft plant: with slightly faster roll modes, additional yaw damping
    and a dynamical decoupling between the roll/yaw axes (see
Cβ Cp Cr Cφ Cdr Cdp [8] for modal placement with decoupling options). Theses
 lβ lp lr lφ   ldr ldp  choices, along with the LFT design plant G(s, θ), allow the
ẋ =   
 nβ np nr nφ  x+  ndr ndp  u
 (13)
computation of the LFT feedback K(θ) in (16). The LFT
0 1 Dr 0 0 0 feedforward term Hφ (θ) is calculated in order to ensure
Let the main parameters be defined as unitary DC gain between φr and φ and to reduce the adverse
θ = [Cφ , lβ , lp , nβ , np , ldp , ndr ]T ∈ R7 yaw effect (see [8] for LFT DC gain calculus).
and the secondary parameters as θ̄ = C. Validation of the LFT closed loop
[Cβ , Cp , Cr , lr , lφ , nr , nφ , Dr , Cdr , Cdp , ldr , ndp ]T ∈ R12 .
Some of the stability derivatives of (13) are approximated Let P̃ (s, Θ) be an LFT representation of the general lateral
to a very close numerical value, as it improves the identifia- aircraft plant (13), depending on the main θ and secondary
bility of others in presence of disturbances (v(t) 6= 0 in (2)): θ̄ parameters and P (s, Θ) = S(s) × P̃ (s, Θ) × A(s) be an
Cr = −1, lφ = nφ = Cdp = 0. Then Θ = [θ; θ̄] is estimated LFT form of the aircraft with actuators and sensors.
using the techniques described in section III-B. Let θ̂ denote the online estimate of the main parameters
θ. The online feedback (resp. feedforward) gain K(θ̂) (resp.
B. Design of the lateral flight control law H(θ̂)), which is already under an LFT form, can be rewritten
As mentionned in II-B, the design model is only a function as an LFR object depending on θ and δθ, where δθ is defined
of the main parameters θ. Hence • denotes an arbitrary mean by7 :
value of any secondary parameter θ̄i . Let G̃(s, θ) of order ∀i, θ̂i (t) = θi + θi0 δθi (t) (17)
m = 5 be defined by: where θ0 (resp. θ̄0 ) contains the values of the main (resp.
   
• • −1 Cφ • • secondary) parameters for an arbitrary fixed flight point.
 lβ lp • •   Let Θ0 = [θ0 , θ̄0 ]. Following section III-D, a normalized
ẋ =   x +  • ldp  u (14) e of Θ is introduced by:
 nβ np • • ndr •  variation Θ
0 1 • 0 0 0 e i ), e i ∈ [−1, +1]
∀i, Θi = Θ0i (1 + pi Θ Θ (18)
1 T
y = [x, β] (15)
s In the following, ∀i, pi = 0.3 is chosen, which means that
and let A(s) and S(s) be actuator and sensor transfer all aircraft plants with a ± 30% variation of e.g. Cφ = Θ1
matrices. Using G(s, θ) = S(s) × G̃(s, θ) × A(s) as a design around the nominal value Cφ0 = Θ01 are analysed. In practice,
model, the following lateral control law is used: this corresponds to a large continuous domain of the flight
envelope and can be adapted to a specific region of interest
   Z T
drc in the flight domain.
= K(θ) β, p, r, φ, β + Hφ (θ) φr , (16)
dpc In figure 2, let L(s, θ, θ̄, δθ) (or similarly L(s, Θ, δθ), or
e δθ) using (18)) denote the LFT transfer function
L(s, Θ,
where φr is the integral of the pilot reference input φ̇r , K ∈ between φr and the error ǫ (weighted by a low-pass filter
R2×5 is an LFT static feedback gain and Hφ ∈ R2 is an W (s)), comparing the aircraft closed loop with a second
LFT static feedforward gain. order reference model R(s, θ, θ̄), chosen as the desired roll
The structure of this law allows not only a roll control but behaviour. The aircraft closed loop is obtained by intercon-
also an efficient integral yaw control. Indeed, lateral inputs necting the complete open-loop aircraft LFT plant with the
on the sidestick command a desired roll rate φ̇r . When the LFT control law described by equation (16). L(s, θ, θ̄, δθ) is
sidestick deflection is neutral (φ̇r = 0), the aircraft maintains obtained under the standard form of figure 1, where d and
its roll angle4 . Pilot inputs on the pedals command a desired p on this figure correspond to φr and ǫ, while the size of
sideslip angle βr (not presented in (16)) so that the aircraft ∆Θ = diag(∆θ , ∆θ̄ ) is 19 + 12 = 31 and the size of ∆δ is
sideslip is null when no pedal inputs are made (which is 16.
taken into account in (16) via an integrator on β). Also Firstly, closed-loop stability is analysed for Θe ∈ H e and
Θ
when a roll rate is initiated, adverse yaw is compensated δθ = 0. The stability margin kmax , defined as the maximal
for (meaning that the transient sideslip should be slightly value of k for which L(s, Θ, e 0) is stable for all Θ
e ∈ kH e ,
Θ
negative5 for a positive roll rate, before converging to zero). must be greater than 1. This condition is easily checked using
Following the methodology presented in III-C, the choice e.g. the Skew Mu Toolbox [10] so that nominal stability of
of the closed-loop eigenvalues λi (θ) is conventional (with e 0) is guaranteed for all considered variations of Θ.
L(s, Θ, e
enhancement for LFT usage) w.r.t classical aeronautical
6 Indeed m = 5 in Lemma 1 but n > 12.
4 For reasonnable angles, otherwise a roll angle protection reduces it. 7 The definition of the estimation error used for validation is slightly
5 Sideslip sign conventions may differ from one book to another, see [11] different from the one used to describe the adaptive LFT control principle,
for the ones used in this article. for simplicity’s sake in section II-B.

1537
 Aircraft lateral closed-loop
of (18). As a matter of fact, if the domain of study is
φr Hφ (θ, δθ) restricted to a single flight point Θ0 , i.e. by choosing pi = 0
  in (18), the stability margin α w.r.t estimation errors is
drc
dpc
significantly increased, e.g. αLT I = 91% for Cruise (see
+ φ table I). These theoretical results are confirmed by the time-
β 1 K(θ, δθ) P (s, θ, θ̄)
+
s domain simulations of section IV-D.
[β, p, r, φ]T +
In practice the estimator has to be chosen so that the
W (s) ǫ estimation errors stay within these bounds.
−

φr R(s, θ, θ̄) D. Benchmark and simulation results

φref
Fig. 2. Transfer function L(s, θ, θ̄, δθ) for closed-loop performance 1) Implementation constraints: the adaptive LFT con-
analysis troller is implemented on a nonlinear six-degree-of-freedom
simulator representative of an Airbus aircraft. The simulated
20 aircraft is modeled by the general equation (1), where the
δ θ LTI
Worst−case norm of L (dB)

actuator models are of order 3 with l1 = 30◦ and l2 =

10 δ θ LTV
0 simulation, such as turbulence or wind gradient. All con-
−10
−20
0 0.05 0.1
Norm of estimation errors
Fig. 3. Worst-case H∞ /iL2 norms of L(s, θ, θ̄, δθ)
Secondly, let α be the maximal value of k, for which
e δθ) is stable for all Θ
L(s, Θ, e ∈ H e and δθ ∈ kHδ . If
Θ
the estimation error is supposed to be LTI, a guaranteed
value αLT I = 0.329 of the maximal allowable estimation
error is computed as the solution of a skew µ problem [10].
If the estimation error is supposed to be LTV, an estimate
αLT V = 0.305 is computed using the technique of [9] which
involves constant and frequency-dependent scalings. These
numerical results imply that the closed loop is transiently
and asymptotically stable for any Θ e ∈ H e and at least
Θ
δθ ∈ 0.3Hδ .
Thirdly, closed-loop performance is studied by com-
puting an estimate of the worst-case H∞ norm [10]:
maxΘ∈H e 0)k∞ = −16.3 dB. This estimate sets
kL(s, Θ,
e e
Θ
a ceiling value for the adaptive closed-loop performance in
any possible condition (i.e. for all Θ, δθ).
Finally, an estimate of the worst-case induced L2 norm of
e δθ) is computed for Θ
L(s, Θ, e ∈ H e and δθ ∈ kHδ , where
Θ
k < α is fixed. Depending on the LTI or LTV assumption
on the estimation error, either the routine of [10] or the
technique of [9] is used. Fig. 3 shows the evolution of the
guaranteed worst-case H∞ (resp. induced L2 ) norm w.r.t k.
These numerical results show that the closed-loop per-
formance is robust to a large amount of estimation errors,
for a continuous domain of the flight envelope (pi = 30%
variation around a nominal flight point Θ0 ), for both transient
and asymptotic regimes. Nonetheless, these results could be
largely improved by a better modelisation of the aircraft
LFT form P (s, Θ) w.r.t to its flight domain (where stability
derivatives would themselves be function of the Mach num-
ber, airspeed, etc.) instead of the conservative modelisation
40◦ /s and a bandwith of 6.6 rad/s, and sensor models are
of order 4. Several disturbances can be activated during a
trol laws are coded in a discrete-time environment, with
a sampling rate of 16 Hz, introducing time-delays in the
αLT V
chain of command8 . As mentionned before, the adaptive
αLT I
LFT controller is particularly well suited for such contraints,
0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35
whether it regards design (no restrictive assumptions are
k
needed for modal placement9 ) or practical implementation
(high-frequency updates are not needed nor is there a high
CPU workload for the estimates/gains update).
When estimating the model on line, the main tuning
parameter is the initial value of the matrix Pe (t) in (3)-(6).
For the sake of simplicity, this value is chosen as p0 I, where
the positive scalar p0 is to be tuned manually. Several trial
and error simulations confirm that p0 = 10 is a suitable value
for several flight points, with or without disturbances.
The other parameter to be tuned is the filter bandwith wf
in section III-B. This filter can be used as well to filter
unmeasured disturbances in (2) (e.g. turbulence) in order to
improve the transient quality of the RLS estimates. A value
of 1 rad/s was chosen here.
It is worth mentionning that these values are fixed for all
simulations, regardless of the chosen flight point or the
presence of disturbances. Only the initial values of the
estimates change, depending on the simulation scenario.
2) Description of the validation scenarios: in order to
demonstrate the improvement of both roll and yaw han-
dling qualities when scheduling information is lost, the first
scenario, see subsection IV-D.3, considers an aircraft in an
approach configuration (prior to landing, see table I - 1st
line) and calm weather conditions. The airspeed information,
normally used as a scheduling parameter, is missing and the
pilot commands a basic roll rate doublet.
The second scenario, see subsection IV-D.4, demonstrates
the robustness of the adaptive closed loop to a lateral wind
gradient during approach (table I - 1st line), without any
8 Time-delay models, namely Pade approximations, are included as well
in the design open-loop model of section IV-B.
9 Note that the design model can hold unstable poles, non-minimum phase
zeros and can have a multi-input-output structure.

1538
 TABLE I Normal Law
A IRCRAFT CONFIGURATIONS 5 Adaptive Law
Alternate Law
Altitude Speed Weight Landing gear / Flaps pilot input

p (°/s)
Approach 3000 ft 220 kt 160 T Fully extended 0
Cruise 38000 ft Mach 0.82 200 T Fully retracted
−5
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
1
input from the pilot. It is shown that the external disturbance
excites the closed loop so that most estimates converge to

beta (°)
0
their true value at the given flight point.
The third scenario, see subsection IV-D.5, intends to show −1
the adaptive capabilities of the controller on a different flight 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
10
point, namely cruise (table I - 2nd line), and to demonstrate

dpcom (°)
the robustness of the adaptation process to severe turbulence. 0
Only a roll rate doublet is commanded to excite the closed −10
loop. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
10
3) First scenario: performance improvement in case of

drcom (°)
loss of scheduling information: assume that the loss occurred 0
in cruise, where the RLS estimates had previously reached −10
asymptotic values. In the worst-case situation, the pilot made 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
t (s)
no lateral input (i.e. no closed-loop excitation) during the Fig. 4. Closed-loop response to a series of steps on φ̇r
whole descent so that the aircraft configuration is now in
approach (table I - 1st line) and the LFT controller uses Cˆφ 1 1

nˆp
incorrect estimated values, i.e. estimates corresponding to
0.5
cruise. The pilot then asks for a doublet φ˙r = pr = 0.5
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15
±5◦ /s. A conventionnal Airbus aircraft would be flying
under Alternate Law (degraded behaviour).

ldp
lˆβ

1 1

ˆ
Fig. 4 presents the wind-free closed-loop responses. The
roll rate p, the sideslip angle beta, and the commanded 0.8
0 5 10 15
0.8
0 5 10 15
aileron (resp. rudder) deflection dpcom (resp. drcom ) are
displayed. The adaptive closed-loop curves are in solid line 1 1.2

nˆdr
lˆp

(−), the Alternate Law closed-loop curves are in dash-dot 1

0.5
line (−·) and the Normal Law10 closed-loop curves are in 0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15
dashed line (−−). t(s)

Fig. 5 shows the normalized RLS estimates, where each 2

nˆβ

estimate11 is divided by the true value to be reached, so

that each normalized estimate should converge to one. Their
initial values correspond to the ones in cruise, inducing up
to 80% relative error, but closed-loop stability is maintained
in practice, confirming the theoretical results of the last
paragraph of section IV-C. It should be noted that even with
little pilot inputs and no extra excitation, convergence of all
normalized estimates to a value close to one is very fast.
Consequently, the adaptive closed-loop performance recovers
very quickly the Normal Law performance in roll and
sideslip, without any overshoot or high-frequency oscilla-
tions, while the Alternate Law response is sluggish in roll
and adverse yaw is not compensated for. The benefits of the
adaptive controller to easier handling qualities are obvious.
4) Second scenario: robustness to lateral wind gradient:
fig. 6 presents the simulation results during approach in
the presence of a lateral wind gradient, establishing its
maximum ten knot velocity over a one second time frame.
Consequently, the aircraft should return to a stabilized state
10 Normal Law is unavailable in practice for this scenario but it is still
displayed to show the optimal performance.
11 Only the main parameter estimates are displayed.
1
0 5 10 15
t(s)
Fig. 5. Normalized estimates evolution to a series of steps on φ̇r
as soon as possible. The lateral wind gradient introduces
a transient bias v(t) in equation (2) used for online iden-
tification, until stabililization is achieved. A large amount
of error is introduced in the estimate initial values, set to
80% (relatively) from the true parameter values 12 . Despite
the lack of any excitation except for the disturbance itself,
most of the normalized estimates converge rapidly to a value
close to one (fig. 7). The drift of Cˆφ emphasizes what an
appropriate excitation is. Indeed, during this simulation, the
wings remain basically level (φ ≈ 0) so that the impact of
φ on the β̇ equation (13) could be explained by any value
of Cφ . Therefore, its normalized estimate converges to a
value far from one. This also puts in perspective the need
for monitoring the online estimates (e.g. bounding them),
as a post-processing treatment on the estimated values (not
12 This arbitrary relative error is chosen accordingly to the maximum
initial error between cruise and approach configurations.

1539
 1
p (°/s) Normal Law
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
Adaptive Law An adaptive control scheme, based on gain-scheduling and
0
robustness tools, was applied to the lateral control of an
−1 aircraft around a trim point. The online computational time
2 4 6 8 10 12 14
5 is reduced using a gain-scheduled controller under an LFT
form, and guaranteed closed-loop stability and performance
beta (°)

0 properties are obtained using advanced robustness analysis

techniques. The adaptive flight control law is shown to be
−5
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 robust to the presence of several disturbances, a key issue
t(s)
Fig. 6. Closed-loop response in presence of a lateral wind gradient
in the perspective of an implementation on a real aircraft.
Extending the technique to the adaptive aircraft control along
a trajectory is currently studied, with two main difficulties,
10 2
namely a lack of closed-loop excitation and a time-varying
Cˆφ

nˆp

1.5
5 aircraft model to be estimated.
1
2
0 5 10 15
2
0 5 10 15 R EFERENCES
t (s)
1.5 [1] P. Apkarian, L. Ravanbod-Hosseini, and D. Noll, “Time domain
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1.5
ˆ
lˆβ

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1 Nonlinear Control, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 197–217, 2011.
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15
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nˆdr

1.5
lˆp

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1
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15 [3] C. Cao and N. Hovakimyan, L1 Adaptive Control Theory. Society
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−1
0 5 10 15 AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, 2011.
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5 Normal Law
Adaptive Law
pilot input
p (°/s)

−5
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
2
beta (°)

−2
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
t(s)
Fig. 8. Closed-loop response to a series of steps on φ̇r in presence of
severe turbulence

1540