Design of Near-optimal Earth Escape Orbits for Solar Sail Spacecraft

With the increase of the interest in solar sailing, it is required to provide a basis for future detailed planetary escape mission analysis by drawing together prior work, clarifying and explaining previously anomalies. In this paper, a technique for escaping the Earth by using a solar sail is developed and numerically simulated. The spacecraft is initially in a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). Blended solar sail analytical control law, explicitly independent of time, are then presented, which provide near-optimal escape trajectories and maintain a safe minimum altitude and which are suitable as a potential autonomous onboard controller. This control law is investigated from a range of initial conditions and is shown to maintain the optimality previously demonstrated by the use of a single-energy gain control law but without the risk of planetary collision. Finally, it is shown that the blending solar sail analytical control law is suitable for solar sail on-board autonomously control system.

Novel backstepping design for blended aero and reaction-jet missile autopilot

The advanced missile uses blended control of nero-fin and reaction-jet to improve missile maneuverability. The blended control design, which is multi-inputs and multi-outputs （MIMO）, severe nonlinear, and model uncertain, is much more complex than conventional nero-fin control. A novel nonlinear backstepping control approach is proposed to design the blended autopilot. Missile model is reformed to a new one by state reconstruction technique so that it is easy to be handled by the backstepping method. Then a Lyapunov function is chosen to avoid oscillation caused in normal backstepping way when control parameters are mismatched. In distribution of both inputs, optimal energy logic is proposed. In addition, a fuzzy cerebellar model articulation controller （FCMAC） neural network is used to guarantee controller robustness to uncertainties. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the efficiency and advantages of the proposed method.

Nonlinear autopilot design for interceptors with tail fins and pulse thrusters via θ–D approach

The missile autopilot for an interceptor with tail fins and pulse thrusters is designed via the θ-D approach. The nonlin- ear dynamic model of the pitch and yaw motion of the missile is transformed into a linear-like structure with state-dependent coef- ficient （SDC） matrices. Based on the linear-like structure, a θ-D feedback controller is designed to steer the missile to track refer- ence acceleration commands. A sufficient condition that ensures the asymptotic stability of the tracking system is given based on Lyapunov＇s theorem. Numerical results show that the proposed autopilot achieves good tracking performance and the closed-loop tracking system is asymptotically stable.

Optimal Control and Output Feedback Considerations for Missile with Blended Aero-fin and Lateral Impulsive Thrust

For the missile with blended aero-fin and lateral impulsive thrust, a blended control autopilot is designed, which comprises an optimal controller and a control allocation module. The combined optimal/classical approach is applied to designing the optimal controller to determine the virtual controls, and the control allocation module is used to distribute the desired vitlual controls onto the redundant control effectors. The autopilot holds some attractive characteristics, such as simple structure, good tracking performance and robustness; moreover the actual constraints of the control effectors can be taken into account. Based on this blended control autopilot, it is found that the conflict between stability and fast tracking performance is serious when using the total acceleration as feedback. In order to avoid this problem, the transient factors in total acceleration are eliminated, so the acceleration caused only by angle of attack is used as feedback, and obvious improvement is shown. Finally, how to get reasonable acceleration feedback is discussed, and conclusion is presented that after passing the low-pass filter, the total acceleration can also be used as feedback, and satisfied tracking performance can be obtained.