Aircraft Take-Off in Windshear: A Viability Approach

This paper is devoted to the analysis of aircraft dynamics during tage-off in the presence of windshear. We formulate the take-off problem as a differential game against Nature. Here, the first player is the relative angle of attack of the aircraft (considered as the control variable) and the second player is the disturbance caused by a windshear. We impose state constraints on the state variables of the game, which represents aircraft safety constraints (minimum altitude, given altitude rate). By using viability theory, we address the question of existence of an open loop control assuring a viable trajectory (i.e. satisfying the state constraints) no matter the disturbance is, i.e. for all admissible disturbances causeed by the windshear. Through numerical simulations of the viability kernel algorithm, we demonstrate the capabilities of this approach for determining safe flight domains of an aircraft during take-off within windshear.     

Wind identification along a flight trajectory,part 3: 2D-dynamic approach

This paper deals with the identification of the wind profile along a flight trajectory by means of a two-dimensional dynamic approach. In this approach, the wind velocity components are computed as the difference between the inertial velocity components and the airspeed components. The airspeed profile as well as the nominal thrust, drag, and lift profiles are obtained from the available DFDR measurements. The actual values of the thrust, drag, and lift are assumed to be proportional to the respective nominal values via multiplicative parameters, called the thrust, drag, and lift factors. The thrust, drag, and lift factors plus the inertial velocity components at impact are determined by matching the flight trajectory computed from DFDR data with the flight trajectory available from ATCR data. This leads to a least-square problem which is solved analytically under the additional requirement of closeness of the multiplicative factors to unity. Application of the 2D-dynamic approach to the case of Flight Delta 191 shows that, with reference to the last 180 sec before impact, the values of the multiplicative factors were 1.09, 0.84, and 0.89; this implies that the actual values of the thrust, drag, and lift were 9% above, 16% below, and 11% below their respective nominal values. For the last 60 sec before impact, the aircraft was subject to severe windshear, characterized by a horizontal wind velocity difference of 123 fps and a vertical wind velocity difference of 80 fps. The 2D-dynamic approach is applicable to the analysis of windshear accidents in take-off or landing, especially for the case of older-generation, shorter-range aircraft which do not carry the extensive instrumentation of newer-generation, longer-range aircraft. The same methodology can be extended to the investigation of aircraft accidents originating from causes other than windshear (e.g., icing, incorrect flap position, engine malfunction), above all if its precision is further increased by combining the 2D-dynamic approach and the 2D-kinematic approach.     

Definition and properties of cooperative equilibria in a two-player game of infinite duration

A two-player multistage game, with an infinite number of stages is considered. The concepts of overtaking and weakly overtaking payoff sequences are introduced. The class of strategies considered consists of memory strategies, which are based on the past history of the control and the initial state from where the game has been played. Weak equilibria are defined in this class of strategies. It is then shown how such equilibria can be constructed by composing into a trigger strategy a nominal cooperative control sequence and two threat strategies representing the announced retaliation by each player in the case where the other player does not play according to the nominal control. When the threats consists of a feedback equilibrium pair, the resulting cooperative equilibrium is perfect. Another result shows that, if each player can use a most effective threat based on a saddle-point feedback strategy, then any weak equilibrium in the class of memory strategies is in some sense related to this particular kind of equilibrium in the class of trigger strategies.Dedicated to G. LeitmannThis research was supported by SSHRC Grant No. 410-81-0722 and FCAC Grant No. EQ-428 to the first author. This research has also been made possible by a financial support from the University of Puerto Rico.     

Optimal abort landing trajectories in the presence of windshear

This paper is concerned with optimal flight trajectories in the presence of windshear. The abort landing problem is considered with reference to flight in a vertical plane. It is assumed that, upon sensing that the airplane is in a windshear, the pilot increases the power setting at a constant time rate until maximum power setting is reached; afterward, the power setting is held constant. Hence, the only control is the angle of attack. Inequality constraints are imposed on both the angle of attack and its time derivative.The performance index being minimized is the peak value of the altitude drop. The resulting optimization problem is a minimax problem or Chebyshev problem of optimal control, which can be converted into a Bolza problem through suitable transformations. The Bolza problem is then solved employing the dual sequential gradient-restoration algorithm (DSGRA) for optimal control problems. Numerical results are obtained for several combinations of windshear intensities, initial altitudes, and power setting rates.For strong-to-severe windshears, the following conclusions are reached: (i) the optimal trajectory includes three branches: a descending flight branch, followed by a nearly horizontal flight branch, followed by an ascending flight branch after the aircraft has passed through the shear region; (ii) along an optimal trajectory, the point of minimum velocity is reached at about the time when the shear ends; (iii) the peak altitude drop depends on the windshear intensity, the initial altitude, and the power setting rate; it increases as the windshear intensity increases and the initial altitude increases; and it decreases as the power setting rate increases; (iv) the peak altitude drop of the optimal abort landing trajectory is less than the peak altitude drop of comparison trajectories, for example, the constant pitch guidance trajectory and the maximum angle of attack guidance trajectory; (v) the survival capability of the optimal abort landing trajectory in a severe windshear is superior to that of comparison trajectories, for example, the constant pitch guidance trajectory and the maximum angle of attack guidance trajectory.Portions of this paper were presented at the IFAC 10th World Congress, Munich, Germany, July 27–31, 1987 (Paper No. IFAC-87-9221).This research was supported by NASA Langley Research Center, Grant No. NAG-1-516, by Boeing Commercial Airplane Company (BCAC), and by Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). Discussions with Dr. R. L. Bowles (NASA-LRC) and Mr. C. R. Higgins (BCAC) are acknowledged.     

CIR框架下的投资组合效用微分博弈

建立了Cox-Ingersoll—Ross随机利率下的关于两个投资者的投资组合效用微分博弈模型．市场利率具有CIR动力,博弈双方存在唯一的损益函数,损益函数取决于投资者的投资组合财富．一方选择动态投资组合策略以最大化损益函数,而另一方则最小化损益函数．运用随机控制理论,在一般的效用函数下得到了基于效用的博弈双方的最优策略．特别考虑了常数相对风险厌恶情形,获得了显示的最优投资组合策略和博弈值．最后给出了数值例子和仿真结果以说明本文的结论．     

Aircraft landing control under wind disturbances

Results from differential game theory are applied to construct an adaptive control in linear systems with an unknown level of dynamic disturbances. The efficiency of the method is exemplified by a problem of aircraft landing under wind disturbance.     

The gold-mine game

The paper considers the following two-person zero-sum game. The minimizing player chooses to hide his gold and a mine in two distinct boxes from an infinite number of boxes labelled 1, 2, 3,.... The maximizing player now chooses to open the boxes in some order, and if he finds the gold before the mine the payoff to him is 1; otherwise, the payoff is zero. The game is solved in the sense of Kindler.     

Quitting games – An example

Quitting games are multi-player sequential games in which, at every stage, each player has the choice between continuing and quitting. The game ends as soon as at least one player chooses to quit; each player i then receives a payoff r _S ⁱ, which depends on the set S of players that did choose to quit. If the game never ends, the payoff to each player is zero.? We exhibit a four-player quitting game, where the “simplest” equilibrium is periodic with period two. We argue that this implies that all known methods to prove existence of an equilibrium payoff in multi-player stochastic games are therefore bound to fail in general, and provide some geometric intuition for this phenomenon. Received: October 2001     

Abort landing in windshear: Optimal control problem with third-order state constraint and varied switching structure

Optimal abort landing trajectories of an aircraft under different windshear-downburst situations are computed and discussed. In order to avoid an airplane crash due to severe winds encountered by the aircraft during the landing approach, the minimum altitude obtained during the abort landing maneuver is to be maximized. This maneuver is mathematically described by a Chebyshev optimal control problem. By a transformation to an optimal control problem of Mayer type, an additional state variable inequality constraint for the altitude has to be taken into account; here, its order is three. Due to this altitude constraint, the optimal trajectories exhibit, depending on the windshear parameters, up to four touch points and also up to one boundary arc at the minimum altitude level. The control variable is the angle of attack time rate which enters the equations of motion linearly; therefore, the Hamiltonian of the problem is nonregular. The switching structures also includes up to three singular subarcs and up to two boundary subarcs of an angle of attack constraint of first order. This structure can be obtained by applying some advanced necessary conditions of optimal control theory in combination with the multiple-shooting method. The optimal solutions exhibit an oscillatory behavior, reaching the minimum altitude level several times. By the optimization, the maximum survival capability can also be determined; this is the maximum wind velocity difference for which recovery from windshear is just possible. The computed optimal trajectories may serve as benchmark trajectories, both for guidance laws that are desirable to approach in actual flight and for optimal trajectories may then serve as benchmark trajectories both for guidance schemes and also for numerical methods for problems of optimal control.This paper is dedicated to Professor George Leitmann on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.     

Problems of conflict control of high dimensionality functional systems

A minimax control problem with a performance index which is the sum of two terms is considered for a system with a delay. The first of these two terms in the Euclidean norm of the set of deviations of the motion of the system at specified instants of time from the stipulated objectives, while the second term is an integral-quadratic penalty which is imposed on the form of the control actions. The problem arises in a differential game. In this case, the history of the motion serves as the information for the strategies. A functional treatment of the control process in question is given which is based on an original prediction of the motion. A procedure for calculating the value of the game and for constructing minimax and maximun control strategies, which is convenient for numerical implementation, is obtained from this treatment and from the construction of hulls, convex upwards, of auxiliary functions from the method of stochastic program synthesis. The results of a numerical experiment are presented.     

On a duel with time lag and equal accuracy functions

This paper deals with a duel with time lag that has the following structure: Each of two players I and II has a gun with one bullet and he can fire his bullet at any time in [0, 1], aiming at this opponent. The gun of player I is silent and the gun of player II is noisy with time lagt (i.e., if player II fires at timex, then player I knows it at timex+t). They both have equal accuracy functions. Furthermore, if player I hits player II without being hit himself before, the payoff is +1; if player I is hit by player II without hitting player II before, the payoff is –1; if they hit each other at the same time or both survive, the payoff is 0.This paper gives the optimal strategy for each player, the game value, and some examples.     

CIR框架下的投资组合效用微分博弈(英文)

建立了Cox-Ingersoll-Ross随机利率下的关于两个投资者的投资组合效用微分博弈模型.市场利率具有CIR动力,博弈双方存在唯一的损益函数,损益函数取决于投资者的投资组合财富.一方选择动态投资组合策略以最大化损益函数,而另一方则最小化损益函数.运用随机控制理论,在一般的效用函数下得到了基于效用的博弈双方的最优策略.特别考虑了常数相对风险厌恶情形,获得了显示的最优投资组合策略和博弈值.最后给出了数值例子和仿真结果以说明本文的结论.     

A multistage game with incomplete information requiring an infinite memory

This paper describes a zero-sum, discrete, multistage, time-lag game in which, for one player, there is no integerk such that an optimal strategy, for a new move during play, can always be determined as a function of the pastk state positions; that is, the player requires an infinite memory. The game is a pursuit-evasion game with the payoff to the maximizing player being the time to capture.This paper is the result of work carried out at the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, under an Australian Commonwealth Postgraduate Award.The author should like to thank the referee for his valued suggestions.     

Subgame-consistent cooperative solutions in randomly furcating stochastic differential games

The paradigm of randomly-furcating stochastic differential games incorporates additional stochastic elements via randomly branching payoffs in stochastic differential games. This paper considers dynamically stable cooperative solutions in randomly furcating stochastic differential games. Analytically tractable payoff distribution procedures contingent upon specific random realizations of the state and payoff structure are derived. This new approach widens the application of cooperative differential game theory to problems where the evolution of the state and future environments are not known with certainty. Important cases abound in regional economic cooperation, corporate joint ventures and environmental control. An illustration in cooperative resource extraction is presented.     

On measurable minimax selectors

In this note we consider the upper value of a zero-sum game with payoff function depending on a state variable. We provide a new and much simpler proof of a measurable minimax selection theorem established 25 years ago by the author in Nowak (1985) [19]. A discussion of the basic assumptions and relations with the literature on stochastic games and (minimax) control models is also included.     

On a class of differential games without saddle-point solutions

The minimax solution of a linear regulator problem is considered. A model representing a game situation in which the first player controls the dynamic system and selects a suitable, minimax control strategy, while the second player selects the aim of the game, is formulated. In general, the resulting differential game does not possess a saddle-point solution. Hence, the minimax solution for the player controlling the dynamic system is sought and obtained by modifying the performance criterion in such a way that (a) the minimax strategy remains unchanged and (b) the modified game possesses a saddle-point solution. The modification is achieved by introducing a regularization procedure which is a generalization of the method used in an earlier paper on the quadratic minimax problem. A numerical algorithm for determining the nonlinear minimax strategy in feedback form, in which Pagurek's result on open-loop and closed-loop sensitivity is used to nontrivially simplify the computational aspects of the problem, is presented and applied on a simple example.     

Abort landing in the presence of windshear as a minimax optimal control problem,part 1: Necessary conditions

The landing of a passenger aircraft in the presence of windshear is a threat to aviation safety. The present paper is concerned with the abort landing of an aircraft in such a serious situation. Mathematically, the flight maneuver can be described by a minimax optimal control problem. By transforming this minimax problem into an optimal control problem of standard form, a state constraint has to be taken into account which is of order three. Moreover, two additional constraints, a first-order state constraint and a control variable constraint, are imposed upon the model. Since the only control variable appears linearly, the Hamiltonian is not regular. Thus, well-known existence theorems about the occurrence of boundary arcs and boundary points cannot be applied. Numerically, this optimal control problem is solved by means of the multiple shooting method in connection with an appropriate homotopy strategy. The solution obtained here satisfies all the sharp necessary conditions including those depending on the sign of certain multipliers. The trajectory consists of bang-bang and singular subarcs, as well as boundary subarcs induced by the two state constraints. The occurrence of boundary arcs is known to be impossible for regular Hamiltonians and odd-ordered state constraints if the order exceeds two. Additionally, a boundary point also occurs where the third-order state constraint is active. Such a situation is known to be the only possibility for odd-ordered state constraints to be active if the order exceeds two and if the Hamiltonian is regular. Because of the complexity of the optimal control, this single problem combines many of the features that make this kind of optimal control problems extremely hard to solve. Moreover, the problem contains nonsmooth data arising from the approximations of the aerodynamic forces and the distribution of the wind velocity components. Therefore, the paper can serve as some sort of user's guide to solve inequality constrained real-life optimal control problems by multiple shooting.An extended abstract of this paper was presented at the 8th IFAC Workshop on Control Applications of Nonlinear Programming and Optimization, Paris, France, 1989 (see Ref. 1).This paper is dedicated to Professor Hans J. Stetter on the occasion of his 60th birthday.     

Static search games played over graphs and general metric spaces

We define a general game which forms a basis for modelling situations of static search and concealment over regions with spatial structure. The game involves two players, the searching player and the concealing player, and is played over a metric space. Each player simultaneously chooses to deploy at a point in the space; the searching player receiving a payoff of 1 if his opponent lies within a predetermined radius r of his position, the concealing player receiving a payoff of 1 otherwise. The concepts of dominance and equivalence of strategies are examined in the context of this game, before focusing on the more specific case of the game played over a graph. Methods are presented to simplify the analysis of such games, both by means of the iterated elimination of dominated strategies and through consideration of automorphisms of the graph. Lower and upper bounds on the value of the game are presented and optimal mixed strategies are calculated for games played over a particular family of graphs.     

A Game Related to the Number of Hides Game

In this paper, we study a discrete search game on an array of N ordered cells, with two players having opposite goals: player I (searcher) and player II (hider). Player II has to hide q objects at consecutive cells and player I can search p consecutive cells. The payoff to player I is the number of objects found by him. In some situations, the players need to adopt sophisticated strategies if they are to act optimally.     

Saddle-point equilibrium sequence in one class of singular infinite horizon zero-sum linear-quadratic differential games with state delays

ABSTRACT

We consider an infinite horizon zero-sum linear-quadratic differential game with state delays in the dynamics. The cost functional of this game does not contain a control cost of the minimizing player (the minimizer), meaning that the considered game is singular. For this game, definitions of the saddle-point equilibrium and the game value are proposed. These saddle-point equilibrium and game value are obtained by a regularization of the singular game. Namely, we associate this game with a new differential game for the same equation of dynamics. The cost functional in the new game is the sum of the original cost functional and an infinite horizon integral of the square of the minimizer's control with a small positive weight coefficient. This new game is regular, and it is a cheap control game. An asymptotic analysis of this cheap control game is carried out. Using this asymptotic analysis, the existence of the saddle-point equilibrium and the value of the original game is established, and their expressions are derived. Illustrative example is presented.