Globally Exponential Regulation of Hypersonic Vehicle with Strong Nonlinearies

This paper considers a regulation problem for a longitudinal dynamical model of hypersonic vehicles with strong nonlinearies. The problem is reduced to a stabilization problem by shifting the desired equilibrium position to the origin. By means of a control input domination idea and suitable coordinate transformations, the longitudinal dynamics of hypersonic vehicles with engine throttle setting dynamics are divided into a flight-path angle controlled subsystem and a velocity controlled subsystem. A new nonlinear state-feedback control scheme is proposed using a parameter separation technique for dealing with strong nonlinearies and a backstepping approach for designing virtual and actual controllers. The proposed controller ensures the closed-loop signals global boundedness and achieves exponential regulation throughout the vehicle's operational envelope. Simulation results show the desired control system performance for the hypersonic vehicle models with strong nonlinearies.