See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/329622579

Design Linear Feedback and LQR Controller for Lateral Flight Dynamics of F-16
Aircraft

Conference Paper · October 2018

DOI: 10.1109/ICCAIS.2018.8570323

CITATIONS READS
12 572

5 authors, including:

Adnan Ashraf Gaoyuan Liu

7 PUBLICATIONS 28 CITATIONS
Northwestern Polytechnical University
4 PUBLICATIONS 21 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
SEE PROFILE

Zeeshan Anjum Mian MUHAMMAD Kamal

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Zhengzhou University
4 PUBLICATIONS 23 CITATIONS 26 PUBLICATIONS 226 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Adnan Ashraf on 28 March 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 The 2018 International Conference On Control Automation & Information Sciences (ICCAIS 2018)
October 24-27, 2018, Hangzhou, China.

Design Linear Feedback and LQR Controller for Lateral Flight Dynamics of F-16
Aircraft
Adnan Ashraf1, Wu Mei1, Liu Gaoyuan1, Zeeshan Anjum2 and Mian Muhammad Kamal1
1
School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, P.R.China
2
Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, P.R.China
e-mail: adnan@mail.nwpu.edu.cn, wumei1997@nwpu.edu.cn, yuanl0517@gmail.com, zeeshananjum139@outlook.com
miankamal@mail.nwpu.edu.cn

Abstract— This paper presents the control of lateral
flight dynamics of F-16 aircraft using simple control
techniques. The control of Lateral flight dynamics is an
important characteristic for Automatic Flight Control
System (AFCS) design. We used Linear Feedback and
Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) techniques to
control the lateral flight dynamics of aircraft. A
linearized aircraft model is used because the control
techniques that we used can be applied on linear
system. Pole placement technique is used to place the
poles at a desire location that stabilized the response of
controller and find the value of feedback gain matrix K
for Linear Feedback Controller. In LQR technique to
find the value of feedback gain matrix K, first we
choose an appropriate values of Q and R matrices,
where Q and R are weighing matrix. According to the
initialization of state space vector, the transient
response of lateral dynamics (Slide Slip Angle, Roll
rate, Yaw rate and Roll angle) are investigated and the
performance of both controllers are compared.
Keywords— Lateral Dynamics, LQR, Linear
Feedback, F-16.
I. INTRODUCTION
Whenever we talk about Aircraft design, we talk about
Wright brothers because they are the first who works in
Aircraft design, after that the Aircraft design rapidly
advanced through materials, structures, aerodynamics, and
flight control due to use of numerous new techniques. At
the beginning of Aircraft design, Automatic Flight Control
System (AFCS) concept has been changed from mechanical
control systems to fly-by-wire control systems. For a
successful flight of all modern aircraft depend upon their
flight control system which provides the essential control
qualities. Modern aircraft contain a variety of AFCS that
help the pilot in navigation, stability, and control of the
aircraft [1][2]. For this purpose, we designed simple control
techniques linear feedback and LQR controllers to control
the lateral dynamics of an aircraft which can be used on
autopilot and check the response of these controllers to
identify which controller gives better performance.
In general, there are three translation motions of aircraft
(horizontal, vertical and transverse) and the three rotational
motions (roll, pitch, and yaw) and they can be controlled by
the control surfaces of aircraft which are elevator, aileron,
and rudder. The aircraft control system is divided into two
groups called lateral and longitudinal control. The lateral
motion or roll and yaw angle of aircraft is controlled by the
aileron and rudder [3]. The wings of an aircraft consists of
ailerons where the tail of an aircraft contains rudder. The
problem of roll and yaw angle control is considered as a
lateral problem and this research work presented the lateral
control of an aircraft.
Flight dynamic analysis and control system design is
complicated by the problem of uncertain measurements,
external disturbances and modeling uncertainties [4]. To
resolve the flight stability issues, many research works
have been done on the aircraft lateral control system to
control the lateral dynamics using different control
techniques [5-11]. But still, the research about problems
related to aircraft stability in lateral control system remains
an open issue for the present and future work.
II. MODELING OF AIRCRAFT
In this paper, the lateral control of an aircraft is explained.
Lateral dynamics contains slide slip angle, roll rate, yaw
rate and roll angle (  , p, r ,  ) . The aileron and rudder is
used as a control surface for the roll and yaw motion
control. With the rapid development of the hypersonic
aircraft, there is a growing demand for a reliable controller.
For the purpose of aircraft control design, many linearized
models for hypersonic vehicle are proposed and have been
widely used, which simplify motivates to design a robust
controller [12]. As we work on linear aircraft model so the
linearized model and other necessary parameters for F-16
aircraft can be obtained from [13].
The nonlinear aircraft model is given by,

978-1-5386-6020-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 367

 The 2018 International Conference On Control Automation & Information Sciences (ICCAIS 2018)
October 24-27, 2018, Hangzhou, China.

v  p  q  r     0 (1)  0.0001 0.0003 

Y  mgC  S  m ( v  ru  pw ) (2)  -0.2560 -0.0044 
B 
L  I x p  I xz r  qr(I z  I y )  I xz pq (3)  -0.0133 -0.0292 
 
N   I xz p  I z r  pq(I y  I x )  I xz qr (4)  0 0 

The equations given above are nonlinear, so by using 1 0 0 0 0 0

small-disturbance theory these equations can be linearized. 0 1 0 
0 0 0 
Small disturbance theory states that replace all the C D
0 0 1 0 0 0
variables by a reference value plus disturbance, as given    
below [13]. 0 0 0 1 0 0

u  u0  u; v  v0   v ; w  w0   w ; III. LINEAR FEEDBACK

p  p0   p ; q  q0   q ; r  r0   r; (5) In this control method, the pole placement method is
Y  Y0   Y ; L  L0   L ; M  M 0   M ; presented. If the system declares fully controllable, the
poles of the closed-loop system can be placed at any
   0  
desired location by means of state feedback via a suitable
state feedback gain matrix [14].

Then the linearized model of aircraft is given by, The block diagram of feedback control system is shown in
“Fig. 1”. The control signal is produced as a function of the
d 
system error, the reference roll or yaw angle and the actual
 dt  Yv  v  Yp p   u0  Yr  r   gcos(0 )    Y r r (6) output roll or yaw angle is compared, then the value of
 
controller gain (K) is adjusted to control the input signal
d  I d  for the desired output roll or yaw angle.
Lvv    Lp  p   xz  Lr  r  L a  a  L r  r (7)
 dt   I x dt 
The final computed value of gain matrix K
I d  d 
 Nv v   xz  N p  p    Nr  r  N a  a  N r  r (8)
 I z dt   dt 
 8.6544 -36.0379 10.5165 -86.3719
K  
The state space form of lateral dynamics of aircraft is 631.3773 90.1786 -327.6410 303.6114
given by,

 Y Yp  Y  gcos(0)   Yr 
  -1 r     0
   u0 u0  u0  u0   
 u0 
p    L  p  
Lp Lr 0     La Lr   a  (9)
 r      r    r 
  N Np Nr 0    Na Nr 
   
  0 
 0 1 0 0   0

The state space matrices for the lateral dynamics of F-16

aircraft model are given below, where the aileron and
rudder are the two control inputs for lateral control of Fig. 1. Block diagram of Linear Feedback and LQR Control
aircraft.
IV. LINEAR QUADRATIC REGULATOR
 -0.1203 0.1479 -0.9860 0.0636  LQR is a controller that is alike to pole placement method,
 -17.5184 -1.2523 0.5484 0  but instead of using pole placement method to select the
A  poles location, the value of feedback gain matrix K is
 3.5318 -0.0274 -0.1788 0  calculated by minimizing the cost function to obtain the
 
 0 1 0.1489 -8.0453e-26  design requirement. A continuous-time linear system is
described by

x  Ax  Bu   

978-1-5386-6020-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 368

 The 2018 International Conference On Control Automation & Information Sciences (ICCAIS 2018)
October 24-27, 2018, Hangzhou, China.

The cost function for LQR is defined as LQR and Linear Feedback controllers are applied to the
lateral dynamics (  , p, r ,  ) of an aircraft and the results are

shown in the following figures. According to the
  x Qx  u 
T T
J Ru dt    initialization of state space vector, the response of these
0 lateral dynamics are analyzed and compared the
performance of both controllers. Simulation results
Where Q is the weighting function of states and R is the demonstrate that LQR provides a little slow response but
weighting function of control variables [14]. The values of the better performance for the maximum peak value or
Q and R, are given below which is used to calculate the overshoot and excellent robustness against external
gain matrix K. disturbance as compared to the linear feedback controller.
Simulation result for the linear feedback and LQR about
The weight matrix Q and control matrix R
lateral control are given in the following figures.
10 0 0 0  The figures, “Fig. 3” and “Fig. 4” clearly shows the
 0 10 0 0  robustness of LQR against 5 degree of roll angle
Q  R  1 0  initialization.
 0 0 10 0  0 1 
 
 
 0 0 0 10 

The final computed value of gain matrix K

 4.1742 -2.0060 -6.1360 -2.5386 

K  
1.6638 -0.4535 -5.4706 -0.9007 

Block diagram for LQR and linear feedback are same as

shown in “Fig. 1”, with the only variation in the values of
gain matrix K.
Fig. 3. Input response of Aileron and Rudder Deflection
V. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
The Simulink diagram of linear feedback control and LQR
control is same for the lateral control of an aircraft as
shown in “Fig. 2”, with the only difference in finding the
values of gain matrix K. The gain of linear feedback
controller has been chosen through the pole placement
method, while the gain of LQR controller is selected
through the weighting Q and control R matrices. In this
paper, we considered aileron and rudder deflection as
control inputs for lateral control. The range of the inputs
aileron is -21.5 degrees to 21.5 degrees and rudder is -30
degrees to 30 degrees for F-16 aircraft [14].

Fig. 4. Response of Lateral dynamics of LQR and Linear Feedback

controller with 5 degree of roll angle initialization

Fig. 2. Simulink block diagram of linear feedback and LQR control for
lateral aircraft dynamics

978-1-5386-6020-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 369

 The 2018 International Conference On Control Automation & Information Sciences (ICCAIS 2018)
October 24-27, 2018, Hangzhou, China.

TABLE I. Performance Comparison of LQR and Linear Feedback VI. CONCLUSION

Controller
Lateral Linear Feedback LQR Linear feedback and LQR controllers for the lateral control
Control system of aircraft are designed and analyzed successfully.
Settling Max. Peak Settling Max. Peak
parameters Time (sec) value Time (sec) value After analyzing the result of both controllers the conclusion
 4 -0.6 5 0.1 is that for different initial values of state space vector both
p 3 -7.8 5 -2.1
the controllers have the ability to control lateral parameters
of aircraft. Simulation result shows although the setting
r 3 1.2 4 -0.1
time of LQR is a little higher than linear feedback and the
 2 0 4 0
maximum peak value of LQR is less than the maximum
peak value of linear feedback. It means LQR gives good
The robustness of LQR against 10 degree roll angle performance and great robustness against external
initialization are shown in “Fig. 5” and “Fig. 6”. disturbance, with a slow transient response. In the past,
many research works have been done about the problems
related to lateral control parameters using different control
techniques but for robust and efficient lateral control of an
aircraft, we need to develop more robust, advanced and
intelligent control techniques that gives a better
performance against disturbance.

REFERENCE
Fig. 5. Input response of Aileron and Rudder Deflection [1] R.C. Nelson, “Flight Stability and Automatic Control”, McGraw
Hill, Second Edition, 1998.
[2] Gaber El-Saady, E.-N. A, “Longitudinal Automatic landing System
- Design for CHARLIE Aircraft by Root-Locus”, International
Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 7,
2013.
[3] M. Myint, H.K. Oo, Z.M. Naing and Y.M Myint, “PID Controller
for Stability of Piper Cherokee’s Pitch Displacement using
MATLAB”, International Conference on Sustainable Development:
Issues and prospects for the GMS, China, 2008.
[4] Syed Ussama Ali, M. Zamurad Shah and Raza Samar, “Sliding
Mode Based Roll Control Law Design for a Research UAV and its
Flight Validation”, 13th International Bhurban Conference on
Applied Sciences and Technology (IBCAST), Islamabad, Pakistan,
2016
[5] Vishnu G Nair, Dileep M V, V I George “Aircraft Yaw Control
System using LQR and Fuzzy Logic Controller”, International
Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887), Volume 45– No.9,
May 2012.
[6] Subash John, Abdul Imran Rasheed, Viswanath K. Reddy “ASIC
Implementation of Fuzzy-PID Controller for Aircraft Roll Control”,
Fig. 6. Response of Lateral dynamics of LQR and Linear Feedback International conference on Circuits, Controls and
controller with 10 degree of roll angle initialization Communications (CCUBE), India, 2013.
[7] Adolfo Perrusqu´ıa, Carlos Tovar, Alberto Soria, Juan Carlos
Mart´ınez, “Robust Controller for Aircraft Roll Control System
using Data Flight Parameters”, 13th International Conference on
TABLE II. Performance Comparison of LQR and Linear Feedback Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control
Controller (CCE), Mexico City, Mexico, September 26-30, 2016.
[8] V.Rajeswari, Dr.L.Padma Suresh, “Comparative Assessment of the
Lateral Linear Feedback LQR performances of Linear Quadratic and Sliding Mode Control
Control Methodologies in the Control of Lateral Axis of Aircraft”,
Settling Max. Peak Settling Max. Peak International Conference on Circuit, Power and Computing
parameters Time (sec) value Time (sec) value
Technologies [ICCPCT], 2015.
 4 -1.5 5 0.1
[9] Baoxu Liu, Zongxia Jiao, “LQR Lateral-Directional Control Law
p 2 -14 5 -4 Design for Distributed Propulsion Layout Flying Wing”, IEEE
r 3 3.2 4 -0.1 International Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems
(CIS) and IEEE Conference on Robotics, Automation and
 2 0 4 0
Mechatronics (RAM), Beijing, China, 2017.
[10] Xiaofeng Zhang, Honglun Wang, Xingling Shao and Chang Liu,
“Precise trajectory tracking for UAV based on active disturbance
rejection control”, International Conference on Control,

978-1-5386-6020-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 370

 The 2018 International Conference On Control Automation & Information Sciences (ICCAIS 2018)
October 24-27, 2018, Hangzhou, China.

Automation and Information Sciences (ICCAIS), Changshu, China,

2015.
[11] Hui Li, Zhide Yin, Yu Fan, Fengyi Li, Chuang Song, “A Linear
Active Disturbance Rejection Control Approach for Near Space
Vehicle Autopilot”, International Conference on Control,
Automation and Information Sciences (ICCAIS), Changshu, China,
2015.
[12] Chao Huang1, Ye Yang2, Yongji Wang1, Lei Liu1 and Xiaomeng
Yin1, “Cooperative control for the hypersonic vehicle lateral
attitude tracking”, Chinese Control And Decision Conference
(CCDC), Shenyang, China, 2018.
[13] B. L. Stevens, F. L. Lewis, & E. N. Johnson, “Aircraft Control and
Simulation”, John Wiley and Sons, 3rd Ed, 2015.
[14] Franklin, G. F., Powell, J., & Emami-Naeini, A, “Feedback Control
of Dynamic System”, Pearson, 6th Ed, 2009. waste

978-1-5386-6020-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

View publication stats
371