Pulse-frequency modulated guidance laws for a mortar missile with a pulse jet control mechanism

Abstract

AbstractThe impact point dispersion of mortar missiles can be drastically reduced with a control ring of lateral pulse jets located around the centre of gravity and a homing head to measure or to derive estimates of appropriate missile-target states, e.g. the line-of-sight rates. A simulation model including a missile as a six-degree-of-freedom vehicle, a jet pulse flight control system, and a relative missile-to-target motion was used for the comparison of four guidance laws i.e. proportional navigation guidance, augmented proportional navigation, augmented proportional navigation with rendezvous, and adaptive sliding-mode guidance. This paper focuses on the efficiency of pulse jet control on miss distance, and thus makes the assumption that sensor measurements and the guidance states required to apply each of the guidance laws are perfectly known. Proportional navigation and the adaptive sliding mode guidance exhibit a large miss distance due to limited control authority. Augmented proportional navigation is slightly better than augmented proportional navigation with rendezvous for the same design parameters and they both give small miss distances with limited control authority, but they both require a free gyro. A proper selection of the design parameters — the number of pulse jets and the magnitude of the individual pulse jet thrust for a particular dispersion of flight parameters and the instant of the guidance start — is required to achieve optimum dispersion reduction. The minimum intensity of the individual pulse jet impulse required for the ‘pin point’ accuracy (the circular error probable smaller than 1m) of the mortar missile was determined for all presented guidance laws considering dispersion from the nominal trajectory.