Integrated Plant and Controller Design: An Hinf Based Solution for VTOL Air Vehicle Sizing Problem

This study addresses the integrated plant-controller design problem for sizing a VTOL air vehicle. An Explicit Model Following control architecture is employed, where the reference model is formulated according to selected ADS-33 handling qualities criteria, and parametrized to introduce design flexibility within the optimization framework. An iterative algorithm is developed based on the Linear Matrix Inequalities formulation of the H∞ synthesis problem, enabling sequential optimization of the controller, the parameters of the vehicle's linear parametric model, and the parameters defined for the design objectives. The proposed approach is evaluated using a simplified design scenario. The results indicate that the design objectives are improved without compromising the closed-loop system performance.