Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Foulkes, R. H., Jr..
Flight control system design for lateral control wheel steering is discussed. Two alternate designs are presented. The first design is a roll-rate command, bank-angle hold system with a wings-level track-hold submode. The second is a curved-track-hold system. Design details and real-time flight simulator results are included.
Stochastic control theory is applied to the problem of designing a digital flight compensator for terminal guidance along a helical flight path as a prelude to landing. The development of aircraft, wind, and measurement models is discussed along with a control scheme consisting of feedback gains multiplying estimate of the aircraft and wind states obtained from a Kalman one step predictor. Preliminary results are presented which indicate that the compensator performs satisfactorily in the presence of both steady winds and gusts.