The Flying V concept aircraft represents a notable candidate to reduce the carbon footprint of the aviation industry, with a potential 20% decrease in fuel use and a 17% higher lift-over-drag ratio. However, given the inherent design limitations concerning low control authority and pitch break-up tendencies, a well-designed control system is crucial for the aircraft’s safe operation. Thus, this study proposes a systematic design and tuning of a digital longitudinal flight control system that explicitly addresses robustness specifications a-priori. The flight dynamics simulation modeling is first detailed, followed by the outline and discussion of the design specifications. A C ^∗longitudinal control law is designed using a signal-based H _∞framework. Results indicate effective disturbance and noise rejection, stability under parametric uncertainties, Level 1 handling qualities, and satisfactory performance in the nonlinear model. These results validate the control law’s effectiveness, paving the way for future enhancements in gain-scheduled controllers for the Flying V.

Flight control system design for the Flying-V has been an active research area. However, despite the strengths of H₈ control, this framework has not yet been considered for the system design. Therefore, this study details the synthesis of a longitudinal control law using the robust control signal-based H₈ framework. The trimming procedure used to obtain operating points and linearized flight dynamics is explained, followed by a description of the design requirements which are systematically converted into hard constraints for synthesis. A structured controller design is conducted and the resulting system is evaluated in terms of performance and robustness in linear and nonlinear settings. Results indicate effective disturbance and noise rejection, stability under parametric uncertainties, Level 1 handling qualities predictions, and adequate performance. The C^* control law effectiveness paves the way for future enhancements in gain-scheduled robust controllers for the Flying-V and for the extension to lateral-directional designs.