Performance Analysis of Super-Twisting Sliding Mode Controller for Aircraft Pitch Control

Abstract

Because it was adjusted manually in the early days of aviation, maintaining an aircraft's pitch at the appropriate degree required constant pilot attention. The effectiveness of the aircraft system depends on a well-designed tracking controller to stabilize the aircraft pitch and follow the intended reference signal because the aircraft system is a highly nonlinear and unstable system. The performance analysis of STSMC, which is employed for tracking control of aircraft pitch with dynamic pressure change and external disturbance, is the main emphasis of this research work. The SMC controller is also used for comparisons. By employing the PSO algorithm to minimize the IAEU, the proposed STSMC controller parameters are produced. Both controllers' tracking capabilities using various reference signals are tested using MATLAB software, as well as the durability of their performance when subjected to dynamic pressure change and external disturbance force. By lowering the settling time, rise time, and peak time by 76.72%, 77.40%, and 65.35%, respectively, the obtained simulation results show that the STSMC approach beats the SMC. Similar to this, by reducing the IAEU value for both multiple step signals and ramp signals, the STSMC retains superior tracking performance. Both controllers' performance resilience is evaluated utilizing dynamic pressure fluctuations of up to 10% increment and an outside disturbance force. The suggested STSMC control approach yields peak times, rise times, and settling times in the 10% increment of dynamic pressure of 0.1750sec, 0.0877sec, and 0.1073sec, respectively. These times are small in compared to the SMC. The STSMC provides 0.1620sec, 0.0785sec, and 0.0951sec of peak, rising, and settling times during the external disturbance force rejection test. The STSMC provides 0.4314sec, 0.1879sec, and 0.6145sec of peak time, rise time, and settling time, respectively, which are all minimal compared to the SMC, for the tracking performance robustness against both dynamic pressure fluctuations and external disturbance force. The simulation outcomes generally demonstrated that the proposed STSMC outperformed the SMC controller in terms of tracking performance and robustness against dynamic pressure variation and external disturbance force.