Practical Energy Dissipation Control of Near Space Glider on Independent Longitudinal Plane

Abstract

The near-space hypersonic aerodynamic glider has strong maneuverability in wide flight envelope. The glide is generally achieved in a smooth manner with no or weak altitude oscillations in the altitude. The maximum lift-to-drag ratio glide is a typical trajectory that can approximate the maximum glide range, which is a crucial indicator for a glider. However, another important indicator, the minimum glide range, which is used in some time-sensitive missions and is expected to reduce the velocity to a specified threshold in a short longitudinal range, is difficult to be realized. In practice, the excessive velocity or energy is usually dissipated during lateral manipulation, wherein either the entire glide range or the glide time is not shortened. An innovative guidance strategy is proposed for achieving the minimum glide range based on a typical maximum glide scheme and bang-bang control scheme only on the longitudinal plane, and the flight time can be reduced considerably. Then, a practical extended state observer based pitch control is utilized to efficiently track the bang-bang command within a wide velocity envelope to achieve the guidance objective. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.