On the design of adaptive autopilots for a launch vehicle

Abstract

Three efficient and practical approaches for the design of an adaptive autopilot for a launch vehicle (LV) attitude control system during atmospheric flight are presented. The proposed adaptive control schemes are developed on the basis of different combinations of gain scheduling, decoupling, and the model reference adaptive technique. A new adaptation mechanism based on hyperstability theory is developed. Every scheme contains some degree of adaptation, corresponding to its complexity and cost of realization. A six-degree-of-freedom non-linear simulation was used to compare the adaptation characteristics of the proposed schemes in the presence of different disturbances during atmospheric flight of the vehicle.