Optimal Standoff Distance of Subsonic Unpowered Gliding Vehicle

Abstract

The inverted Y-tail joint standoff weapon is adopted as the Subsonic Unpowered Gliding Vehicle (SUGV) in this article to gain maximum standoff distance. To obtain the optimal standoff distance of SUGV, a direct approach i.e., homogeneous control vector parameterization (CVP), is employed. To achieve the maximum standoff distance, the SUGV requires to spend a maximum amount of time in the air to conduct a gliding flight, resulting in an unspecified final time optimal problem. To deal with this problem, a time scaling approach is adopted in conjunction with homogeneous CVP to achieve the maximum standoff distance. In accordance with the homogeneous CVP technique, the standoff distance of the SUGV is comparatively long in comparison to the maximum step input, and the SUGV reaches a standoff distance of 121 km with an increment of 1.77%. The optimal simulation outcomes indicate that homogeneous CVP delivers a smooth gliding flight as compared to the maximum step input, and this smoother flight results in increased standoff distance. Furthermore, to evaluate the efficiency between the homogeneous CVP approach and maximum step input, the burden on the elevators in the form of integral square value and time scaling parameter is chosen as a criterion for quantitative analysis, and this analysis reveals that the homogeneous CVP approach has less burden on the elevators than the maximum step input.