Performance improvement of aircraft pitch angle control using a new reduced order fractionalized PID controller

In this paper, a new optimal reduced order fractionalized PID (ROFPID) controller based on the Harris Hawks Optimization Algorithm (HHOA) is proposed for aircraft pitch angle control. Statistical tests, analysis of the index of performance, and disturbance rejection, as well as transient and frequency responses, were all used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The performance of the proposed HHOA-ROFPID and HHOA-ROFPID controllers with Oustaloup and Matsuda approximations was then compared not only to the PID controller tuned by the original HHO algorithm but also to other controllers tuned by cutting-edge meta-heuristic algorithms such as the atom search optimization algorithm (ASOA), Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA), sine-cosine algorithm (SCA), and Grey wolf optimization algorithm (GOA). Simulation results show that the proposed controller with the Matsuda approximation provides better and more robust performance compared to the proposed controller with the Oustaloup approximation and other existing controllers in terms of percentage overshoot, settling time, rise time, and disturbance rejection.