Adaptive Control of Hypersonic Flight Vehicles With Limited Angle-of-Attack

TLDR

The paper designs a high‑performance adaptive controller for hypersonic flight vehicles with uncertain models and faulty, hysteretic actuators. The authors derive a parameterized HFV model and design adaptive tracking controllers for velocity and altitude, incorporate barrier‑function–based angle‑of‑attack handling, compensate for partial loss of effectiveness and backlash hysteresis, and validate the approach with simulations. The proposed controller improves transient performance, limits angle‑of‑attack to scramjet specifications, and guarantees desired performance even with actuator partial loss of effectiveness.

Abstract

This paper designs a high-performance adaptive controller for the uncertain model of hypersonic flight vehicles (HFVs) proceed by faulty and hysteretic actuators. A parameterized HFV model is derived, based on which adaptive tracking controllers for velocity and altitude are designed, sequentially. Compared with other adaptive strategies that mainly focus on the parametric uncertainty and asymptotic tracking, utilization of the prescribed performance control technique can largely improve the transient characteristics of HFVs. A novel handling on angle-of-attack (AOA) is proposed with the help of barrier functions. As a result, the magnitude of AOA is limited to match the requirement of the scramjet. Partial loss of effectiveness (PLOE) of actuators is also taken into account, while the backlash hysteresis in aerodynamic control surfaces is accommodated by an adaptive inverse compensation. Corresponding analysis shows that both the limited AOA and the desired performance can be guaranteed despite PLOE of actuators. A simulation study is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller.