Trajectory optimisation for a rocket-assisted hypersonic boost-glide vehicle

Abstract

In this work, trajectory optimisation has been performed for a wing-body rocket assisted vehicle to compute the bestset of performance parameters including burn-out angle, angle-of-attack, bank-angle and throttle command that would result in optimal down-range and cross-range performance of the re-entry vehicle. An hp-adaptive Pseudospectral method has been used for the optimisation by combining the launch and rocket rocket-assisted re-entry stages. The purpose of the research is to compute optimal burn-out condition, angle-of-attack, bank-angle and optimal thrust segments that would maximise the down-range and cross-range performance of the hypersonic boost glide vehicle, under constrained heat rate environments. The variation of down-range/cross-range performance of rocket rocket-assisted hypersonic boost glide vehicle with bounds on diminishing heat rate has also been computed.

Constraints Maintaining Mesh Refinement Method for Solving Whole Trajectory of Discontinuous Aerodynamics

“…The Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile [6,7] reportedly has a speed of Mach 10, a range of more than 2,000 km and the ability to perform evasive maneuvers in any phase of flight. One advantage of these advanced vehicle is that their trajectories are unpredictable due to continual hypersonic maneuvering, making interception extremely difficult [8,9]. As a consequence, the research significance of trajectory for the aforementioned vehicles is captured in two aspects.…”

Rapid Ascent-Entry Vehicle Mission Optimization Using hp-Adaptive Gaussian Quadrature Collocation

“…Compared with the studies performed on high-speed entry vehicles, less research has focused on trajectory optimization for the combined ascent-entry problem [15][16][17][18][19][20]. Reference [15] employs a direct shooting method to generate a maximum downrange trajectory for a high-speed vehicle boosted from a three-stage rocket.…”

“…[16] for gliding guidance of high lift-to-drag ratio hypersonic vehicles launched from a multi-stage rocket. References [17][18][19] utilize an adaptive pseudospectral method to explore trade-offs in maximum downrange or crossrange performance for a variety of entry vehicles boosted from a two-stage rocket. Finally, Ref.…”

“…Next, this paper studies a hypothetical ground strike mission whereas previous work has largely focused on maximum downrange/crossrange trajectories (see Refs. [15,[17][18][19]. As such, the endpoint conditions and objective functional are fundamentally different from those explored in Refs.…”

“…As such, the endpoint conditions and objective functional are fundamentally different from those explored in Refs. [15,[17][18][19][20]. Of particular note, vertical flight endpoint conditions are investigated in this paper (challenging due to singularities in the equations of motion and because the bank angle becomes undefined in vertical flight).…”