Design of an AIr-to-AIr Automatic Refueling Flight Control System Using Quantitative Feedback Theory

Quantitative feedback theory is developed for the design of an automatic station-keeping flight control system to regulate the position of an aircraft receiving fuel relative to the tanker aircraft during air-to-air refueling. A robust flight control system is designed for automating the station-keeping task. A simple outer loop feedback control system is developed that achieves stable position regulation in the presence of wind gusts and fuel transfer related disturbances. The modelling and analysis clearly show the usefulness of QFT in the design of flight control systems for aircraft with large structured parametric uncertainty. Linear and nonlinear simulations are performed to validate the design.