Autonomous Control Reconfiguration of Aerospace Vehicle Based on Control Effectiveness Estimation

Future aerospace vehicles （ASV） are designed to fly in both inner and extra atmospheric fields, which requires autonomous adaptability to the uncertainties emanated from abrupt faults and continuously time-varying environments. An autonomous control reconfiguration scheme is presented for ASV to deal with the uncertainties on the base of control effectiveness estimation. The on-line estimation methods for the time-varying control effectiveness of linear control system are investigated. Some sufficient conditions for the estimable system are given for different cases. There are proposed corresponding on-line estimation algorithms which are proved to be convergent and robust to noise using the least-square-based methods. On the ground of fuzzy logic and linear programming, the control allocation algorithms, which are able to implement the autonomous control reconfiguration through the redundant actuators, are put forward. Finally, an integrated system is developed to verify the scheme and algorithms by way of numerical simulation and analysis.

Adaptive augmentation of gain-scheduled controller for aerospace vehicles

This paper proposes an adaptive augmentation control design approach of the gain-scheduled controller.This extension is motivated by the need for augmentation of the baseline gainscheduled controller.The proposed approach can be utilized to design flight control systems for advanced aerospace vehicles with a large parameter variation.The flight dynamics within the flight envelope is described by a switched nonlinear system,which is essentially a switched polytopic system with uncertainties.The flight control system consists of a baseline gain-scheduled controller and a model reference adaptive augmentation controller,while the latter can recover the nominal performance of the gainscheduled controlled system under large uncertainties.By the multiple Lyapunov functions method,it is proved that the switched nonlinear system is uniformly ultimately bounded.To validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach,this approach is applied to a generic hypersonic vehicle,and the simulation results show that the system output tracks the command signal well even when large uncertainties exist.

Trajectory linearization control of an aerospace vehicle based on RBF neural network

An enhanced trajectory linearization control （TLC） structure based on radial basis function neural network （RBFNN） and its application on an aerospace vehicle （ASV） flight control system are presensted. The influence of unknown disturbances and uncertainties is reduced by RBFNN thanks to its approaching ability, and a robustifying itera is used to overcome the approximate error of RBFNN. The parameters adaptive adjusting laws are designed on the Lyapunov theory. The uniform ultimate boundedness of all signals of the composite closed-loop system is proved based on Lyapunov theory. Finally, the flight control system of an ASV is designed based on the proposed method. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the designed approach.

Research Progress in Aerospace Vehicles Propelled by Rocket-Based Combined Cycle Engines

The research status on the development of RBCC engines and corresponding aerospace vehicles around the world was overviewed,and the technical and application characteristics of RBCC technology were summarized.New development trends of combined cycle engines as well as space transportation were analyzed,and lastly,some suggestions on the development of RBCC and the relative aerospace vehicles were proposed.

A novel three-inflection-point sliding mode control framework for forward-tilting morphing aerospace vehicle with performance constraints and actuator faults

A prescribed performance control scheme based on the three-inflection-point hyperbolic function and predefined time performance function is proposed to solve the trajectory tracking problem of the forward-tilting morphing aerospace vehicle with time-varying actuator faults.To accurately estimate the loss degree of actuator faults,an immersion and invariance observer based on the predefined time dynamic scale factor is designed to estimate and compensate it.A composite dynamic sliding mode surface is designed using a three-inflection-point hyperbolic function,and a novel three-inflection-point sliding mode control framework is proposed.The convergent domain of the sliding manifold is adjusted by parameters,and the system error convergence is controllable.A transfer function is designed to eliminate the sensitivity of the three-inflection-point hyperbolic sliding mode to the unknown initial state,and combined with the barrier Lyapunov function,and the performance constraint of the system is realized.The global asymptotic stability of the system is demonstrated using a strict mathematical proof.The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control scheme are proven by simulation experiments.

Multi-scale design and optimization for solid-lattice hybrid structures and their application to aerospace vehicle components

By integrating topology optimization and lattice-based optimization,a novel multi-scale design method is proposed to create solid-lattice hybrid structures and thus to improve the mechanical performance as well as reduce the structural weight.To achieve this purpose,a two-step procedure is developed to design and optimize the innovative structures.Initially,the classical topology optimization is utilized to find the optimal material layout and primary load carrying paths.Afterwards,the solid-lattice hybrid structures are reconstructed using the finite element mesh based modeling method.And lattice-based optimization is performed to obtain the optimal crosssection area of the lattice structures.Finally,two typical aerospace structures are optimized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization framework.The numerical results are quite encouraging since the solid-lattice hybrid structures obtained by the presented approach show remarkably improved performance when compared with traditional designs.

Design and Analysis of Biomimetic Nose Cone for Morphing of Aerospace Vehicle

Morphing capability is absolutely vital for aerospace vehicle to gain predominant functions of aerodynamics, mobility and flight control while piercing and re-entering the atmosphere. However, the challenge for existing aerospace vehicle remains to change its structure of nose cone agilely. This paper carries out a lot of observational experiments on honeybee＇s abdomen which enhances the flight characteristics of honeybee by adjusting its biomorphic shape. A morphing structure is adopted from honeybee＇s abdomen to improve both the axial scalability and bending properties of aerospace vehicle, which can lead to the super-maneuver flight performance. Combined with the methods of optimum design and topology, a new bionic morphing structure is proposed and applied to the design of morphing nose cone of aerospace vehicle. Furthermore, simulations are conducted to optimize the structural parameters of morphing nose cone. This concept design of biomimetic nose cone will provide an efficient way for aerospace vehicle to reduce the aerodynamic drag.

Robust optimization of control command for aerospace vehicles with aerodynamic uncertainty

To reduce the design burden of Aerospace Vehicles(ASVs)control systems,this paper proposes a multi-constrained robust trajectory optimization method,which provides a good front-end input for the control system.Differ from the conventional aircraft,some control performance of ASVs is not only related to the model parameters,but also affected by the flight status.Therefore,the robust optimization method combines this characteristic of ASVs,sets the control performance as one of the optimization objectives,and considers the influence of parameter uncertainty.In this method,the polynomial chaos expansion algorithm is used to transform the trajectory optimization problem with uncertain parameters into the equivalent deterministic robust trajectory optimization problem.Finally,compared with traditional deterministic trajectory optimization methods to illustrate the effectiveness of proposed control optimization method.

Gas-surface interaction features under effects of gas-gas molecules interaction in high-speed flows

Understanding interactions between gas molecules and solid surface is key to the aerodynamic design of high-speed,high-altitude aerospace vehicles,but there is a large dispersion of gas-surface interaction parameters or namely accommodation coefficients.The uncertainty results partly from different considerations of the interaction between gas molecules in various experimental and numerical methods.In this study,effects of gas-gas molecules interaction are systematically discussed by comparing two different approaches of molecular dynamics simulation of high-speed argon molecules scattering on a graphite surface.The popularly-used“single scattering”approach repeats the scattering process of a single gas molecule without considering the gas-gas molecules interaction.The newly-developed“continual scattering”approach continually shoots gas molecules at the surface,considering collisions between gas molecules in addition to gas molecules’collisions with surface.Gas-surface interaction features in the two approaches are compared and discussed under various affecting factors including rarefaction degree,gas-surface interaction strength,surface temperature and incident velocity.It is shown that these two approaches usually produce different accommodation coefficients,and the corresponding mechanisms are explained.This study could help clarify some doubts about the selection of accommodation coefficients in engineering practice,and also provide an instruction on design of an appropriate molecular dynamics simulation approach.

Advances in critical technologies for hypersonic and high-enthalpy wind tunnel

Hypersonic and high-enthalpy wind tunnels and their measurement techniques are the cornerstone of the hypersonic flight era that is a dream for human beings to fly faster,higher and further.The great progress has been achieved during the recent years and their critical technologies are still in an urgent need for further development.There are at least four kinds of hypersonic and high-enthalpy wind tunnels that are widely applied over the world and can be classified according to their operation modes.These wind tunnels are named as air-directly-heated hypersonic wind tunnel,light-gas-heated shock tunnel,free-piston-driven shock tunnel and detonation-driven shock tunnel,respectively.The critical technologies for developing the wind tunnels are introduced in this paper,and their merits and weakness are discussed based on wind tunnel performance evaluation.Measurement techniques especially developed for high-enthalpy flows are a part of the hypersonic wind tunnel technology because the flow is a chemically reacting gas motion and its diagnosis needs specially designed instruments.Three kinds of the measurement techniques considered to be of primary importance are introduced here,including the heat flux sensor,the aerodynamic balance,and optical diagnosis techniques.The techniques are developed usually for conventional wind tunnels,but further improved for hypersonic and high-enthalpy tunnels.The hypersonic ground test facilities have provided us with most of valuable experimental data on high-enthalpy flows and will play a more important role in hypersonic research area in the future.Therefore,several prospects for developing hypersonic and high-enthalpy wind tunnels are presented from our point of view.

Design of Embryo-electronic Systems Capable of Self-diagnosing and Self-healing and Configuration Control

As aerospace vehicles travel in a hellish environment, the reliability of the measuring and controlling systems has played a critical role in the credibility of a whole airborne system. Embryo-electronic system is a bionic hardware capable of self-diagnosing and self-healing. This article presents a new approach to design embryo-electronic systems and introduces their bionic principles, system structures and fanlt-tolerant mechanism. As the current methods cannot meet the requirements for large-scale embryo-electronic systems, this article advances a new shift-register-based configuration memory of embryonic system to solve the problem by using the inter-cell communication to reduce the gene storage capacity of a single cell. The article designs an overall structure of the shift-register-based configuration memories of the embryonic system and connects them into a chain structure. The article also designs an inner circuit of the cell, the control of shift-register-based configuration memory and the way of runtime dynamic configuration. The simulation of field programmable gate array （FPGA） evidences the realizability of the proposed design. Compared to the SRAM-based one, this memory can save 90% of the area when constructing embryonic systems larger than 128× 128 under the same condition.