A Decomposed-model Predictive Functional Control Approach to Air-vehicle Pitch-angle Control

The requirements for the pitch-angle control of an air vehicle are a very fast response with as few vibrations as possible. The vibrations can damage the equipment that is carried within the body of the vehicle. The main problem to deal with is the relatively fast and under damped dynamics of the vehicle and the slow actuators and sensors. We have solved the problem by using a predictive approach. The main idea of this approach is a process output prediction based on a decomposed process model. The decomposition enables the extension of the modelbased approach to processes with integrative behavior such as in the case of a rocket’s pitch-angle control. The proposed approach is not only useful in this case but it gives us a framework to design the control for a wide range of processes. We compared the predictive design methodology with the classical compensator control approach, known from aerospace system control. The advantage of the new approach is the reduced vibrations during the transient response.