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.
Load relief control of launch vehicle using aerodynamic angle estimation
A nonlinear closed-loop load relief scheme is proposed to reduce the aerodynamic load during the ascent phase of a launch vehicle. The proposed controller is designed based on a back-stepping and sliding-mode control scheme with aerodynamic angle feedback. A hybrid load-relief strategy using the load relief scheme around the period of the maximum dynamic pressure and the traditional minimum-drift scheme during the other period is proposed. An aerodynamic angle estimator is also developed using a Kalman filter for the feedback of the load relief control. Numerical simulation is conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed strategy as well as the potential benefits.
HYPERGOLIC REACTION MECHANISMS OF CATALYTICALLY PROMOTED FUELS WITH ROCKET GRADE HYDROGEN PEROXIDE
Abstract The coupling of the physical and chemical processes controlling the ignition delays (τ ign ) of hypergolic propellants complicates the direct analysis of the transient ignition processes. The transport properties of both the propellants and the ambient gas, and the heat of vaporization and reaction affect τ ign and must be considered experimentally. Furthermore, since hypergolic ignition occurs, by definition, on contact, the mechanics of initial contact and subsequent mixing can affect τ ign and must also be considered. Experimental results from a study of the hypergolic ignition of a catalytically promoted fuel with rocket grade hydrogen peroxide (RGHP) are presented. Statistical analysis of the experimental data was conducted to evaluate the relative effects of RGHP concentration, initial ambient pressure, and the ambient gas on τ ign . At RGHP concentrations of less than 92% in water, stable ignition was difficult to achieve. At sufficiently high Lewis number, an oscillatory ignition process is observed. A phenomenological model comprising mixing, RGHP decomposition, fuel heating and vaporization, and auto-ignition is presented and compared to the experimental results.