Hidden oscillations in aircraft flight control system with input saturation

Abstract The presence of actuator saturation can dramatically degrade the system performance. Since the feedback loop is broken when the actuator saturates the unstable modes of the regulator may then drift to undesirable values. The consequences are that undesired nonlinear oscillations appear and that the settling time may unacceptably increase. Rigorous analysis of nonlinear aircraft models is a very difficult task, that is why a numerical simulation is often used as an analysis and design tool. In this paper difficulties of numerical analysis related to the existence of hidden oscillations in the aircraft control system are demonstrated.