3D Profile Reconstruction and Guidance for the Terminal Area Energy Management Phase of an Unpowered RLV with Aerosurface Failure

Abstract

This paper focuses on the guidance of an unpowered reusable launch vehicle (RLV) with aerosurface failure in the terminal area energy management (TAEM) phase. The aerosurface failure will limit the bank capability, and has a great influence on the range and turning radius of RLV. To this end, a new TAEM guidance scheme with the ability of online profile reconstruction is proposed in this paper for the bank-constrained RLV. The 3-dimensional (3D) profile is reconstructed online by directly adjusting the parameters of the dynamic pressure profile and the two-external-tangent-circle-based ground track profile. As the coupling between vertical and lateral motion is considered in the trajectory propagation, the reconstruction accuracy is guaranteed. Then, a closed-loop TAEM guidance law is proposed to track the reconstructed 3D profile. The effectiveness and robustness of the guidance scheme are verified by numerical simulations with a variety of initial states and model deviations.