Study on a new power by wire thrust vector control system with high reliability

The thrust vector control (TVC) system is used to control the attitude and direction of a launch vehicle by regulating the swinging angle of the rocket engine. At present, the electro-hydraulic (EH) TVC systems are most widely used due to their excellent dynamic and steady-state control performances. The launch vehicles that use EH TVC systems include the Space Shuttle, Saturn V, Atlas V, Long March series, Soyuz, Arian V, et al. When output power is larger than 5 kW, the energy of the EH TVC system usually comes from the rocket engine, gas generator, or compressed nitrogen. The EH TVC systems that are powered by battery are usually used in the third stage or upper stage of launch vehicles, where the output power of the system is smaller than 5 kW. In this article, the characteristics of a typical PBW system will be analyzed first, and then the concept of an ideal PBW system will be presented. Based on this, a new PBW TVC system will be proposed and studied. At last, a quad redundant PBW system with high reliability is designed to meet the requirement of mancarrying launch vehicles in the future.