Adaptive sliding mode tracking control for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle

This paper is concerned with the adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) design problem for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (FAHV). This problem is challenging because of the inherent couplings between the propulsion system, the airframe dynamics and the presence of strong flexibility effects. Due to the enormous complexity of the vehicle dynamics, only the longitudinal model is adopted for control design in the present paper. A linearized model is established around a trim point for a nonlinear, dynamically coupled simulation model of the FAHV, then a reference model is designed and a tracking error model is proposed with the aim of the ASMC problem. There exist the parameter uncertainties and external disturbance in the model, which are not necessary to satisfy the so-called matched condition. A robust sliding surface is designed, and then an adaptive sliding mode controller is designed based on the tracking error model. The proposed controller can drive the error dynamics onto the predefined sliding surface in a finite time, and guarantees the property of asymptotical stability without the information of upper bound of uncertainties as well as perturbations. Finally, simulations are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed control methods.