Flight control for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle based on quasi-continuous high-order sliding mode

The focus of this paper is on control design and simulation for the longitudinal model of a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (FAHV). The model of interest includes flexibility effects and intricate couplings between the engine dynamics and flight dynamics. To overcome the analytical intractability of this model, a nominal control-oriented model is constructed for the purpose of feedback control design in the first place. Secondly, the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) quasi-continuous high-order sliding mode (HOSM) controller is proposed to track step changes in velocity and altitude, which is based on full state feedback. The simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.