| In this work, a flight control system for a reusable launch vehicle during Terminal Area Energy Management (TAEM), approach and landing phases of flight is developed and then tested in a high fidelity, nonlinear six degree of freedom simulation. A new control algorithm based on multiple time scale Sliding Mode Control, driven by sliding mode disturbance observers using gain adaptation is designed. Comparisons with a classical, gain scheduled PID controller are made and considerable improvements in performance are shown. The developed Sliding Mode Control system has potential to improve vehicle safety and reliability through robustness to disturbances, and to decrease development and operational cost by reduced analysis time and improved launch availability. |
