Airplane dynamic modeling and automatic flight control design

This Systems Engineering project report discusses the design and implementation of automatic flight controls. The general airplane equations of motion are developed and used to calculate transfer functions for a Cessna 172 airplane. Automatic controllers were designed for four common autopilot modes (pitch control, altitude hold, roll control, and heading hold). Implementation of a flight control design was accomplished using single degree of freedom roll equations for a model airplane wing. The feedback compensation design was ground tested in a simulated wind tunnel and met performance requirements. All the elements of automatic flight control design are described in this report.