Limitations of autopilot design for controlling a statically unstable flexible interceptor

The Mach number, angle of attack and altitude of operation for an interceptor vary widely during the course of its trajectory. As a result, the interceptor Center of Pressure (CP) locations move significantly around a given Center of Gravity (CG) location at these operating conditions. This results in an inevitable variation in aerodynamic static stability leading to stable and unstable operating regions. In order to ensure good speed of response during the interceptor homing phase, lesser static stability is desirable. Hence the requirement to handle aerodynamic instability at some other operating conditions in the interceptor envelope become inevitable. Since flexibility has a strong bearing on autopilot design, it becomes necessary to control unstable operating points in the presence of flexibility modes. Despite the static stability variation, aerodynamic design can control the level of maximum instability of the configuration. Hence the maximum static instability the autopilot can handle has to be specified for aerodynamic configuration design. This paper brings out the limitations of autopilot design in controlling an unstable interceptor with low bending mode frequencies in terms of maximum instability the autopilot design can handle, which serves as an important input for aerodynamic design.     

Roll control using discrete-time robust sliding hyperplanes and fast output sampling

Robustness to unmatched parametric uncertainty is prime requirement of roll control algorithm, especially when it is modelled in discrete time domain and implemented through on-board processor. Sliding mode control is a well established nonlinear control technique, which ensures a robust performance in presence of matched uncertainties and disturbances. In case of the discrete version of sliding mode control, due to finite operational sampling frequency, the system trajectories cannot be forced to slide on the switching manifold. The trajectories remain confined to certain domain around the sliding surface and this is known as Quasi Sliding Mode (QSM) motion. The bound of QSM decides the accuracy and performance of the discrete version of sliding mode. By design, the discrete-time sliding modes are robust to the matched bounded perturbations, however, unmatched perturbations directly affect the boundary layer width and hence the performance of the system. In the present paper, discrete time Lyapunov inequality based sliding hyperplane is designed, which enables robustness to unmatched perturbations arising due to uncertain system matrix A. Further, the requirement of full state-vector for the design of control and sliding surface is met through the multi-rate output feedback (MROF). This control strategy is then demonstrated with application to roll position control of missile with a bandwidth limited actuator.