Abstract
The near-space hypersonic aerodynamic glider has strong maneuverability in wide flight envelope. The glide is generally achieved in a smooth manner with no or weak altitude oscillations in the altitude. The maximum lift-to-drag ratio glide is a typical trajectory that can approximate the maximum glide range, which is a crucial indicator for a glider. However, another important indicator, the minimum glide range, which is used in some time-sensitive missions and is expected to reduce the velocity to a specified threshold in a short longitudinal range, is difficult to be realized. In practice, the excessive velocity or energy is usually dissipated during lateral manipulation, wherein either the entire glide range or the glide time is not shortened. An innovative guidance strategy is proposed for achieving the minimum glide range based on a typical maximum glide scheme and bang-bang control scheme only on the longitudinal plane, and the flight time can be reduced considerably. Then, a practical extended state observer based pitch control is utilized to efficiently track the bang-bang command within a wide velocity envelope to achieve the guidance objective. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Highlights
In the past several decades, hypersonic vehicles have attracted worldwide attention in aerospace industry due to their high flight speeds
Unlike the powered cruising hypersonic vehicles, the minimum glide range of a hypersonic glider is more critical when the velocity must be reduced to a specified threshold as soon as possible such that the subsequent actions can be conducted to deal with time-sensitive missions
The dominant means of dissipating the excessive energy is based on lateral manipulation while the vertical motion should not be changed since the airframe of the hypersonic glider is only suitable for a narrow altitude envelope in near space
Summary
In the past several decades, hypersonic vehicles have attracted worldwide attention in aerospace industry due to their high flight speeds. During the deceleration process of a hypersonic glider, the Mach number will be reduced considerably by almost 10 This will cause remarkable time-varying dynamic characteristics in a wide velocity envelope, and an effective attitude controller is necessary to meet the opposite extremal glide range requirements such that the original guidance objectives can be achieved. A unified guidance and control strategy is proposed for an unmanned hypersonic glider to realize the maximum and minimum glide ranges completely on an independent longitudinal plane. (1) A unified energy dissipation strategy solely on the longitudinal plane is proposed according to the aerodynamic characteristics of the near space glider (2) A stability margin tester-based attitude control is provided to achieve satisfactory control performance within a large velocity and altitude envelope by only using a linear time-invariant (LTI) controller.
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