A SINGULAR-ARC APPROXIMATION TO A DYNAMIC SAILPLANE FLIGHT PATH OPTIMIZATION PROBLEM

Abstract

A dynamic sailplane performance problem is investigated using optimal control theory. The problem is to minimize the total flight time between successive thermals subject to zero altitude loss. From the original nonlinear optimal control problem, a singular linear/quadratic problem is derived and solved. A relationship between the original optimal control problem and a certain parameter optimization problem is explored, and it is shown that the solution to this parameter optimization provides a lower bound for the minimum flight time of the original optimal control problem. The parameter optimization solution is adopted as the reference trajectory for the linear/quadratic problem. Finally, the linear/quadratic problem is shown to provide a good approximation to the original optimal control problem at a small fraction of the computing cost.