Integrated/Coordinated Control of Aircraft Gas Turbine Engine and Electrical Power System: Towards Large Electrical Load Handling

The paper considers a problem of integrated thrust and electrical power management for an aircraft. An advanced configuration of the aircraft electrical power system consisting of two generators driven by the gas turbine engine is considered. A Model Predictive Controller is designed to respond to thrust and electrical load commands while maintaining system operation at high efficiency setpoints and satisfying the input and state constraints, including surge margin limits. The design steps are described and closed-loop simulation results are reported based on the nonlinear system model.