Decentralized Flight Control Integration and Performance Evaluation

Decentralized flight control shows great advantage in implementation, and is well fitted into a systematic flight control systems development and engineering process. However, the preservation of locally achieved design specifications under the integrated system environment is largely unknown. This work proposes two control integration approaches to address this challenge. It describes both open-loop and closed-loop integration strategies within an integrated control framework. Furthermore, the selection of candidate subsystems is also taken into account during integration. Using an integrated longitudinal pitch attitude and speed control example, the performance of both strategies is evaluated. Numerical simulation results are included for further demonstration.