Control-Oriented Modeling of an Air-Breathing Hypersonic Vehicle

Full simulation models for flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicles include intricate couplings between the engine and flight dynamics, along with complex interplay between flexible and rigid modes, resulting in intractable systems for nonlinear control design. In this paper, starting from a high-fidelity model, a control-oriented model in closed form is obtained by replacing complex force and moment functions with curve-fitted approximations, neglecting certain weak couplings, and neglecting slower portions of the system dynamics. The process itself allows an understanding of the system-theoretic properties of the model, and enables the applicability of model-based nonlinear control techniques. Although the…