Guidance and Control for Space Capsule in the Presence of Uncertain Dynamic Parameters during the Atmospheric Entry Phase

Abstract

Important issues in designing a controller for re-entry vehicles is environmental uncertainties such as rapid changes in atmospheric properties which is an explicit function of altitude and also uncertainties of itselfvehicle such as aerodynamic coefficient, moment of inertia and so on. This paper deals with the design of a control in order to overcome the uncertainty thatuses bank angle as a trajectory control variable.Another issue raised in recent studies has been integration of adaptive controller with guidance systems of re-entry vehicles because in real re-entry vehicle the bank angle is not a predefined profile function of velocity or altitude buta guidance algorithm are usedto produce bank commands during the atmospheric flight. Hence, other objectives of the thesis is to study and implementing of a guidance algorithm and proving of desired performance of the designed controller in a perfect scenariofrom starting point of the re-entry path until the opening of parachutes. Performance of designed controller is studied through simulations ofsix degrees of freedom of re-entry vehicle.. The results showed good performance in the presence of parametric uncertainty andunknown initial condition.

Keywords

• re
• entry vehicles
• aerodynamic parameter uncertainty
• adaptive controller
• atmospheric entry phase