Finite-time adaptive sliding mode control for heavyweight airdrop operations

This paper investigates the problem of designing a fast convergent sliding mode flight controller of a transport aircraft for heavyweight airdrop operations in the presence of bounded uncertainties without the prior knowledge of the bounds. On the basis of feedback linearization of the aircraft-cargo motion system, a novel integral sliding mode flight control law with gains adaptation is proposed. It contains a nominal control law used to achieve finite-time stabilization performance and a compensated control law used to reject the uncertainties. The switching gains of the compensated control law are tuned using adaptation algorithms, and the knowledge of the bounds of the uncertainties is not required to be known in advance. Meanwhile, the severe chattering of the sliding mode control that caused by high switching gains is effectively reduced. The controller and its performance are evaluated on a transport aircraft performing a maximum load airdrop task in a number of simulation scenarios.