Reference command tracking of a hypersonic vehicle with elastic effects

This paper focuses on the control design and simulation for a hypersonic vehicle with elastic effects. The main characteristic of such vehicles is the strong coupling between the airframe dynamics and propulsion systems. What's more, the elastic coupling between the rigid and elastic body of the vehicle during the flight must be considered when designing the controller. This paper first derive the flexible mode shape of the vehicle, calculate the vibrational frequency under different flight conditions, the vibrational frequency will affect the control bandwidth while the flexible mode shape will change the inertia coupling coefficients. Then, by applying the vehicle's velocity and altitude as reference tracking commands, this paper design a tracking controller based on linear quadratic techniques with integral augmentation. Simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of this controller.