Fuzzy logic based full-envelope autonomous flight control for an atmospheric re-entry spacecraft

Abstract

An intelligent and autonomous flight control system for an atmospheric re-entry vehicle is investigated, based on fuzzy logic control and aerodynamic inversion computation. A common PD-Mamdani fuzzy logic controller is designed for all the five re-entry flight regions characterized by different actuator configurations. A linear transformation to the controller inputs is applied to tune the controller performance for different flight regions while using the same fuzzy rule base and inference engine. An autonomous actuator allocation algorithm is developed, based on the aerodynamic inversion computation, to cover all the five actuator configurations with the same fuzzy logic controller. Simulation results of tracking both a bench mark trajectory and a given nominal re-entry trajectory are presented to evaluate the control performance.