Charles Hall

Sliding Mode Disturbance Observer-Based Control for a Reusable Launch Vehicle

The nations goals to replace the aging Space Shuttle fleet and pursue exploration of our solar system and beyond will require more robust, less costly launch vehicles and spacecraft. This paper presents a novel Sliding Mode Control approach, Sliding Mode Control driven by Sliding Mode Disturbance Observers with Gain Adaptation, for the reusable launch vehicle (RLV) flight control system design as a way to improve robustness to many phenomena such as modeling uncertainties and disturbances, while retaining continuity of control without using high control gains. Due to the robustness to external disturbances (including wind gusts), mission guidance trajectories and modeling uncertainties, the proposed flight control system design also can reduce cost by requiring less time in design cycle and preflight analyses. This design is applied to Terminal Area Energy Management and Approach/Landing (TAL), a flight regime that has had little research effort in recent years. The multiple-loop, multiple time-scale design features low order disturbance observers that rely only on knowledge of the bounds of the disturbance. A gain adaptation algorithm is included in the disturbance observer design that provides the least gain needed for existence of the sliding mode. High fidelity 6 DOF computer simulations of the X-33 technology demonstration sub-orbital launch vehicle for nominal and severe wind-gust tests demonstrate improved performance over a more conventional, classical control system design.

Reusable Launch Vehicle Control in Multiple Time Scale Sliding Modes

A reusable launch vehicle control problem during ascent is addressed via multiple-time scaled continuous sliding mode control. The proposed sliding mode controller utilizes a two-loop structure and provides robust, de-coupled tracking of both orientation angle command profiles and angular rate command profiles in the presence of bounded external disturbances and plant uncertainties. Sliding mode control causes the angular rate and orientation angle tracking error dynamics to be constrained to linear, de-coupled, homogeneous, and vector valued differential equations with desired eigenvalues placement. Overall stability of a two-loop control system is addressed. An optimal control allocation algorithm is designed that allocates torque commands into end-effector deflection commands, which are executed by the actuators. The dual-time scale sliding mode controller was designed for the X-33 technology demonstration sub-orbital launch vehicle in the launch mode. Simulation results show that the designed controller provides robust, accurate, de-coupled tracking of the orientation angle command profiles in presence of external disturbances and vehicle inertia uncertainties. This is a significant advancement in performance over that achieved with linear, gain scheduled control systems currently being used for launch vehicles.

X-33 Attitude Control System Design for Ascent, Transition, and Entry Flight Regimes

The Vehicle Control Systems Team at Marshall Space Flight Center, Systems Dynamics Laboratory, Guidance and Control Systems Division is designing under a cooperative agreement with Lockheed Martin Skunkworks, the Ascent, Transition, and Entry flight attitude control system for the X-33 experimental vehicle. Ascent flight control begins at liftoff and ends at linear aerospike main engine cutoff (NECO) while Transition and Entry flight control begins at MECO and concludes at the terminal area energy management (TAEM) interface. TAEM occurs at approximately Mach 3.0. This task includes not only the design of the vehicle attitude control systems but also the development of requirements for attitude control system components and subsystems. The X-33 attitude control system design is challenged by a short design cycle, the design environment (Mach 0 to about Mach 15), and the X-33 incremental test philosophy. The X-33 design-to-launch cycle of less than 3 years requires a concurrent design approach while the test philosophy requires design adaptation to vehicle variations that are a function of Mach number and mission profile. The flight attitude control system must deal with the mixing of aerosurfaces, reaction control thrusters, and linear aerospike engine control effectors and handle parasitic effects such as vehicle flexibility and propellant sloshing from the uniquely shaped propellant tanks. The attitude control system design is, as usual, closely linked to many other subsystems and must deal with constraints and requirements from these subsystems.

Multiple time scale sliding mode control of reusable launch vehicles in ascent and descent modes

A reusable launch vehicle control problem during ascent and descent is addressed via multiple-time scaled continuous sliding mode control. The proposed sliding mode controller utilizes a two-loop structure and provides robust decoupled tracking of both orientation angle command profiles and angular rate command profiles in the presence of bounded external disturbances and plant uncertainties, including aerodynamic surfaces and engine failures. Sliding mode control causes the angular rate and orientation angle tracking error dynamics to be constrained to linear, decoupled, homogeneous, and vector valued differential equations with desired eigenvalues. The dual-time scale sliding mode controller was designed for the X-33 technology demonstration sub-orbital launch vehicle in the ascent and descent modes. Simulation results show that the designed controller provides robust, accurate, decoupled tracking of the orientation angle command profiles in ascent and descent in presence of external disturbances and vehicle inertia uncertainties. The designed robust controller is to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with flying to new orbits, with new payloads, and with modified vehicles.

Time Domain Simulation of the NASA Crew Launch Vehicle

The NASA Crew Launch Vehicle is a two-stage orbital launcher designed to meet NASA’s current as well as future needs for human space flight. In order to free the designers to explore more possibilities during the design phase, a need exists for the ability to quickly perform simulation on both the baseline vehicle as well as the vehicle after proposed changes due to mission planning, vehicle configuration and avionics changes, proposed new guidance and control algorithms, and any other contingencies the designers may wish to consider. Further, after the vehicle is designed and built, the need will remain for such analysis in the event of future mission planning. An easily reconfigurable, modular, nonlinear six-degree-of-freedom simulation matching NASA Marshall’s in-house highfidelity simulator is created with the ability to quickly perform simulation and analysis of the Crew Launch Vehicle throughout the entire launch profile. Simulation results are presented and discussed, and an example simulation to demonstrate the need for ground vibration testing is shown. I. Introduction HE United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has committed to building the ARES I Crew Launch Vehicle as the man-rated launcher to support the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration 1 . Preliminary Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC these analyses assumed there was insufficient cross-coupling of the vehicle axes to affect stability results. SAVANT uses fully coupled nonlinear equations of motion to run a time-domain simulation to arrive at specific operating points where frequency results are desired. SAVANT is capable of generating both time domain and frequency domain information of both the vehicle integrated stack and Upper Stage flight during ascent flight phases. The tool is used to provide vehicle system and component analysis involving system data for multiple Design Analysis Cycles (DAC) and is able to simulate the effects of component and algorithm modifications in terms of flight performance and robustness requirements.

Ares I Flight Control System Overview

This paper describes the control challenges posed by the Ares I vehicle, the flight control system design and performance analyses used to test and verify the design. The major challenges in developing the control system are structural dynamics, dynamic effects from the powerful first stage booster, aerodynamics, first stage separation and large uncertainties in the dynamic models for all these. Classical control techniques were employed using innovative methods for structural mode filter design and an anti-drift feature to compensate for translational and rotational disturbances. This design was coded into an integrated vehicle flight simulation and tested by Monte Carlo methods. The product of this effort is a linear, robust controller design that is easy to implement, verify and test.

Ares-I Bending Filter Design Using A Constrained Optimization Approach

The Ares-I launch vehicle represents a challenging flex-body structural environment for control system design. Software filtering of the inertial sensor output is required to ensure adequate stable response to guidance commands while minimizing trajectory deviations. This paper presents a design methodology employing numerical optimization to develop the Ares-I bending filters. The design objectives include attitude tracking accuracy and robust stability with respect to rigid body dynamics, propellant slosh, and flex. Under the assumption that the Ares-I time-varying dynamics and control system can be frozen over a short period of time, the bending filters are designed to stabilize all the selected frozen-time launch control systems in the presence of parameter uncertainty. To ensure adequate response to guidance command, step response specifications are introduced as constraints in the optimization problem. Imposing these constrains minimizes performance degradation caused by the addition of the bending filters. The first stage bending filter design achieves stability by adding lag to the first structural frequency to phase stabilize the first flex mode while gain stabilizing the higher modes. The upper stage bending filter design gain stabilizes all the flex bending modes. The bending filter designs provided here have been demonstrated to provide stable first and second stage control systems in both Draper Ares Stability Analysis Tool (ASAT) and the MSFC MAVERIC 6DOF nonlinear time domain simulation.

Design of Launch Vehicle Flight Control Systems Using Ascent Vehicle Stability Analysis Tool

A launch vehicle represents a complicated flex-body structural environment for flight control system design. The Ascent-vehicle Stability Analysis Tool (ASAT) is developed to address the complicity in design and analysis of a launch vehicle. The design objective for the flight control system of a launch vehicle is to best follow guidance commands while robustly maintaining system stability. A constrained optimization approach takes the advantage of modern computational control techniques to simultaneously design multiple control systems in compliance with required design specs. “Tower Clearance” and “Load Relief” designs have been achieved for liftoff and max dynamic pressure flight regions, respectively, in the presence of large wind disturbances. The robustness of the flight control system designs has been verified in the frequency domain Monte Carlo analysis using ASAT.

Evaluation of Ares-I Control System Robustness to Uncertain Aerodynamics and Flex Dynamics

This paper discusses the application of robust control theory to evaluate robustness of the Ares-I control systems. Three techniques for estimating upper and lower bounds of uncertain parameters which yield stable closed-loop response are used here: (1) Monte Carlo analysis, (2) mu analysis, and (3) characteristic frequency response analysis. All three methods are used to evaluate stability envelopes of the Ares-I control systems with uncertain aerodynamics and flex dynamics. The results show that characteristic frequency response analysis is the most effective of these methods for assessing robustness.

Stability Analysis of the NASA ARES I Crew Launch Vehicle Control System

The NASA Crew Launch Vehicle is a two-stage orbital launch vehicle designed to meet NASA’s current as well as future needs for human space flight. In order to free the designers to explore more possibilities during the design phase, a need exists for the ability to quickly perform stability analysis on both the baseline vehicle as well as the vehicle after proposed changes due to mission planning, vehicle configuration and avionics changes, proposed new guidance and control algorithms, and any other contingencies the designers may wish to consider. Further, after the vehicle is designed and built, the need will remain for such analysis in the event of future mission planning. An easily reconfigurable, modular, nonlinear six-degree-of-freedom simulation matching NASA Marshall’s in-house highfidelity simulator is created with the ability to quickly enable stability analysis of the Crew Launch Vehicle throughout the entire launch profile. Stability analysis results are presented and discussed.