Bumpless Transfer Switched Control of Aircraft for Heavy Payload Dropping Missions

Heavy payload airdrops induce significant changes in flight dynamics, posing a formidable challenge in flight controller design. This paper is concerned with the flight control issue of aircraft for heavy payload dropping missions. A multi-equilibrium switched systems scheme is introduced to describe dramatic variations in flight dynamics and trim points, thus covering complex scenarios where the aircraft drops heavy payloads at non-central positions. Then, a bumpless transfer switched controller for the underlying systems is proposed, with the aim of ensuring system stability and suppressing undesirable control bumps. In contrast to existing studies on switched systems with a common equilibrium, the proposed stability conditions and bumpless transfer methods are extended to encompass the realm of multi-equilibrium switchings. Simulations and hardware-in-loop experiments demonstrate that the proposed method provides a theoretical assurance for the stability of the flight control system and exhibits superior bumpless transfer performance.