PID Controller Development
The Pennsylvania State University - Dr. Puneet Singla
Creating a Controller to Change an Aircraft's Root Locus
April 2022
The objective of this project was to use Matlab to create a Root Locus given the equations of motion of an aircraft and design a controller for its pitch motion.
Background
AERSP 304 was a junior-level System Dynamics and Control course that covered analytical and computational techniques for solving mathematical models of multiple degree of freedom engineering systems. This is achieved by exposure to topics such as model development, approximating systems with linear ODEs, linear feedback control systems, and stability analysis.
My Involvement
To determine the stability of the system, a transfer function of the system was obtained and the equations of motion for the aircraft were rewritten in state-space form. MATLAB commands ss and ss2tf were then used to find the open-loop transfer function. This transfer function was used to find the system’s poles, zeros, and output response for a step input. The closed-loop transfer function was also found, and the step response was graphed. The step response was additionally found explicitly by finding a function y(t), and the two graphs were compared.
The MATLAB function sisotool was used to view response over time, as well as the root locus of the system. A lead compensator was added and several K gain values were plotted to determine if the compensator could be used to satisfy certain final motion requirements.