Robust Adaptive Approximate Backstepping Control Design for a Flexible Air-Breathing Hypersonic Vehicle

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents a tracking control problem of a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle with aerodynamic uncertainty. The flight control design is challenging because of heavily coupled propulsive, aerodynamic forces and flexibility effects. A control-oriented model is derived where the flexible dynamics are regarded as perturbations and the aerodynamic uncertainty is included. It does not need to be transformed into a linear parameterization formulation. Based on an analysis of it, it is decomposed into a velocity subsystem and an altitude subsystem. Then dynamic inversion and a sliding mode control are combined to design the controller of the velocity subsystem. In addition, the sliding mode control and adaptive control are incorporated into a backstepping control architecture to develop the controller for the altitude subsystem after it is transformed into approximately strict-feedback form. The upper bounds of the uncertain terms do not need to be known in advance. They are estimated onl...