Minimum-Time Maneuvers of Thrust-Vectored Aircraft

The new aircraft technology of thrust vectoring (TV) enables the execution of new types of poststall maneuvers. Aircraft agility and e ight safety are greatly enhanced. The objective and main contribution of the present work are the suboptimal solution of minimum-time pitch-reversal (there and back ) and yaw-reversal standard agility comparison maneuvers (SACOM). It is demonstrated that, due to asymmetric and coupling moments at high ® and high ¯, pure pitch and yaw maneuvers are impossible; a full six-degree-of-freedom model must be employed. A novel parametric two-stage suboptimization algorithm was developed to copewith the complexity ofthe optimal control problem. All four aerodynamic and three TV controls are simultaneously active in the execution of a low g load, nearly pure 80-deg pitch-reversal and a 30-deg yaw-reversal SACOM of an F-15B aircraft.