Computational Experimental Test on PID Controlled Fixed Wing Aircraft Systems

This paper focuses on the implementation of a control framework for a fixed wing aircraft system and the simulation demonstrations. The aim is to develop several Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers to stabilise the altitude and attitude in a 2D environment by regulating the engine power, the pitch angle, and height in flight operation. In technique, a dynamic mathematical model is established by considering the degrees of freedom and the dynamics of motion of a fixed wing aircraft, which provide a foundation for design and simulation. A simplified aircraft dynamic model is tailored for testing the formed control systems, which can be flexibly modified with different aircraft configurations, for a showcase illustration a calculation of the moment of inertia is included. Further, several flight settings such as height differences and velocities are proposed and a feasible implementation of the PID controllers is introduced for adjusting the control variables, and further a switching mode with two controllers for the height with different speeds are simulated to select the height linked controllers.