The course should provide the students with an overall comprehension of the basic concepts of flight dynamics and control.
An important part of the course is dedicated to the fundamental of flight dynamics, which constitutes the basic knowledge for the analysis that leads to the automatic flight control system design.
After the analysis of the aircraft response to pilot commands and to atmospheric disturbances, the course is dedicated to the basic concepts of the conventional classic linear control theory, applied to particularly interesting practical examples concerning civil and military aircraft.

The students are expected to acquire familiarity with concepts and methods used within the field of atmospheric flight guidance and control. The students shall acquire capabilities of designing simple Stability and Control Augmentation Systems and Autopilots, using autonomously developed codes, under the MATLAB/Simulink environment. They should also become familiar with more complex Flight Control Systems installed on modern civil and military aircraft. At the end of the course, the students should have developed the right skills to address autonomously theoretical and practical subjects related to the proposed program, but not necessarily included, within the state-of-the-art and with particular emphasis to the engineering aspects.

Pre-requirements are basic courses in linear algebra, calculus, and ordinary and partial differential equations and Flight Mechanics.

Aircraft equations of motion in uniform atmosphere
Aircraft response within the small disturbance theory:
o longitudinal and lateral-directional dynamic analysis
o state-space representation
o transfer function representation
o aircraft response to control
o frequency analysis
o turbulence and gust models
Flying/handling qualities and military regulations
Development of a project for a Flight Control System
Design within regulations: specification definition
Approach to classic control theory:
o feedback proportional control
o compensation (Lag/Lead and PID compensators).
o controllability and observability
o state feedback vs. output feedback
Examples of FCS:
o Stability Augmentation Systems:
o Control Augmentation Systems
o Autopilot Systems

The course has a strong practical approach and the students are constantly guided towards the application of theory to case-study examples. Tutorials are, thus, a very important part of the course. For this reason almost half of the course is dedicated to address, solve and analyze the case-study examples proposed within the tutorials.

The subject is at the state-of-the-art and is very well addressed in many books for expert engineers and undergraduate students. Supplemental notes are provided to registered students through the course web page.
Reference books:
• Robert Nelson, Flight Stability and Automatic Control, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill Co., 1998
• Brian L Stevens Frank L Lewis, Aircraft control and simulation, Wiley-Interscience, 2003

The final test consist in a traditional oral exam during which the students is expected to address with theoretical and practical argumentations three different subjects. Analysis and discussion on the tutorial results can contribute to the final evaluation. As this is a specialist course, the final evaluation is strongly affected by the student capability of communicating effectively engineering concepts, using a proper terminology within rational and logical cause-effect relationships.