Approximate output regulation of non-minimum phase hypersonic flight vehicle

Abstract

To circumvent the non-minimum phase behavior in a hypersonic flight vehicle, an asymptotic flight tracking controller is investigated in this work. When the elevator is the only control surface available for the altitude dynamics, the hypersonic vehicle model exhibits unstable zero dynamics, preventing the application of standard inversion-based control techniques. The standard output regulation theory is utilized to design a nonlinear controller, achieving asymptotic tracking of velocity and altitude in a sinusoidal maneuver case with longitudinal acceleration and deceleration. Moreover, a three-layer neural network-based approximation method is presented to solve the center manifold equation for the output regulation problem. Finally, numerical simulations in MATLAB/Simulation Environment illustrate that the proposed controller is effective in providing favorable tracking performance and resisting unstable zero dynamics.