Non-linear full-state control of a flexible hypersonic vehicle

Based on Lyapunov's techniques and a change of coordinates, a new approach to design a global and asymptotic stable controller for the longitudinal inner loop of a flexible hypersonic aircraft is proposed in this paper. The objective is to steer the angle of attack to a desired value while improving the damping of the bending modes. The full state is used in the controller to better damp the oscillations of the bending mode during the transient. Finally, the non-linear control law is united with a LQ controller to change the local behavior of the trajectories and locally damp out the bending modes.