Analysis of the possibilities of applying a fuzzy logic controller in the autothrottle system of general aviation aircraft
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Rzeszow University of Technology
Powstańców Warszawy 12
35-959 Rzeszów, PL
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Autor do korespondencji
Grzegorz Kopecki
Rzeszow University of Technology
Powstańców Warszawy 12
35-959 Rzeszów, PL
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The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of applying a fuzzy logic controller in the autothrottle system of a piston engine general aviation aircraft. Existing throttle control solutions and the application of fuzzy logic controllers in aviation were reviewed. Subsequently, throttle control systems were developed to maintain a commanded indicated airspeed. These included a baseline PID controller and two expert systems employing fuzzy logic, with the second variant extended by a non-linear integral term. The operation of these systems was evaluated through computer simulation experiments. The quantitative and qualitative comparison of the results demonstrated that the fuzzy-logic-based expert systems significantly outperformed the classical PID controller in two of three simulation experiments. Specifically, the expert systems effectively eliminated the 4% overshoot and 10% undershoot observed in the PID controller's responses during the first and second experiments, respectively. In the third experiment, although the PID controller achieves the lowest integral error, the absolute differences between all controllers remain very small, resulting in comparable tracking performance across all variants. Furthermore, in the climb/descent scenario, the extended expert system variant reduced the integral performance criterion by approximately 32% and successfully eliminated the steady‑state error. The main findings confirm that a fuzzy logic controller, especially when extended with a non-linear integral term, provides a feasible and effective solution under the tested conditions, offering a promising approach to potentially reducing pilot workload.