Research, design, simulation and implementation of an automatic flight control system for a real-time flight simulator

Vertigo Flight Simulation is a company located in The Netherlands with its mission being to design, produce and sell low cost flight simulation devices to all levels of the flight training market. One of the products which is developed by Vertigo Flight Simulation is the Vertigo P-2 Trainer. The P-2 Trainer is a fixed-base flight simulator capable of simulating single and twin engine piston aircraft with Flight & Navigation Procedures Trainer Type II (FNPT II) approved aerodynamic and engine models. One important feature which is not yet available for the P-2 Trainer is an Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS) which contains an AutoPilot (AP) and a Flight Director (FD). This system is developed, which includes research, design and implementation, in this thesis by the author as its Master of Science (MSc) Thesis Project for obtaining his Engineering Degree in Electrical Engineering, specialization Avionics. An Automatic Flight Control System has two main functions: the first is to control the aircraft without the need for the pilot to fly the aircraft and the second function is to present the pilot with suggestions how he or she should control the aircraft to follow a certain, by the pilot chosen, attitude, course, altitude or flight plan / flight path. During research, it was found that Automatic Flight Control Systems are basically all designed and based on classical control system theory: inner-loops are used to control the aircraft (these are called the control loops) and outer-loops are used to guide the aircraft (these are called the guidance loops). The problem initially found in implementation of the system was to tune the various inner- and outer-loop gains to give desired aircraft-responses. This problem was overcome by approaching the problem from the classical control system theory point of view. Because the P-2 Trainer is developed with flexibility in mind, it uses a modular design to be able to easily change the aerodynamic aircraft-model and instruments to simulate a new type of aircraft. Because of this design, the Automatic Flight Control System must also be a flexible system. Since the method of simulation, testing and tuning the system is extremely time absorbing, a method will be presented to let the system adapt itself every time a new aerodynamic model is loaded in the flight simulator.