Gain Scheduling with Guardian Maps for Longitudinal Flight Control

A new approach to gain scheduling of linear controllers is proposed and applied to a longitudinal flight control pro-blem. Traditionally, gain scheduling is done a posteriori by the interpolation of controller gains designed for several operating points or conditions. The method proposed here is based on guardian maps and does not require as many linear controller syntheses as there are design points. Rather, it extends the performance of an initial single controller carried out on an arbitrary operating point to the entire domain while ensuring generalized stability all along the process. The method, which uses a given fixed architecture controller, is successfully applied on the longitudinal flight control of a business jet aircraft.