Review of control and guidance technology on hypersonic vehicle

Air-breathing hypersonic vehicle has great military and potential economic value due to its characteristics: high velocity, long range, quick response. Therefore, the development of hypersonic vehicle and its guidance and control technology are reviewed in this paper. Firstly, the development and classification of hypersonic vehicles around the world are summarized, and the geometric configuration and mission profile of typical air-breathing hypersonic vehicle are given. Secondly, the control difficulties of air-breathing hypersonic vehicle are introduced, including integrated design of engine and fuselage, static instability, strong nonlinearity, uncertain aerodynamic parameters, etc. According to its control requirements, the control methods considering external disturbance, fault-tolerant control methods, anti-saturation methods, and prescribed performance control methods considering transient performance constraints are summarized respectively. The classification and comparison of various control methods are given, and the frontiers of theoretical development are analyzed. Finally, considering the effects of composite disturbances, the design of terminal guidance law under multiple constraints is overviewed, including guidance law with angle constraint, velocity constraint, acceleration constraint and time constraint. Similarly, the classification of guidance law design methods under different constraints, their advantages as well as the future development trend and requirements are introduced. (c) 2022 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper reviews the development of air-breathing hypersonic vehicles and their guidance and control technology. The development and classification of hypersonic vehicles worldwide are summarized, and the geometric configuration and mission profile of a typical air-breathing hypersonic vehicle are provided. The challenges in controlling air-breathing hypersonic vehicles are introduced, and various control methods are summarized accordingly. The design of terminal guidance laws under multiple constraints is also overviewed.