A Novel Robust Flight Controller Design for an Air-Breathing Hypersonic Vehicle

Abstract

A novel robust flight control design method is proposed for a generic air-breathing hypersonic vehicle based on a state-dependent Riccati equation technique and a nonlinear disturbance observer. The highly nonlinear dynamics of the hypersonic vehicle are firstly brought to a linear structure having a state-dependent coefficient form. And then a state-dependent Riccati equation is solved at each sampling moment to obtain a nonlinear feedback optimal control law. In order to enhance robustness of the closed-loop system, a nonlinear disturbance observer is introduced to estimate the uncertainty caused by parametric variations and external disturbances. The resulting composite controller achieves not only promising robustness and disturbance rejection performance but also flexible adjustment in the response time. Compared to a Kriging controller, the proposed controller has great advantages in the system response time and robustness. The feasibility of the proposed method is validated by simulation results.