Stabilization of Motions of the Descent Vehicle in the Upper Atmosphere

Abstract

The paper was written in continuation of a series of papers on construction of a control law stabilizing a wide range of motions of the controlled plant. At that, the law in essence must be independent of the plant's dynamic characteristics and the environment. These multimodal (general-purpose) laws must generate the control signal with the minimum computational burden and in the minimum time. These laws have other important characteristics concerning stability of the closed-loop system, its robustness, and so on. The paper studied a controlled plant moving under the action of aerodynamic and other forces. The distinction of the formulated control problem is due to the deficiency of the control actions because it is assumed that the controlled plant has only two control engines. This is the case in the well-known problem of controlling the descent vehicle by stabilizing its lateral motion on the hypersonic leg of flight in the upper atmosphere.