Adaptive flight control for a launch vehicle based on the concept of dynamic inversion

This paper presents an adaptive flight control system for a launch vehicle. The rocket has an in-line configuration with each stage on top to another and the payload placed atop the rocket. The driving is achieved through the reactive rocket engine gimbaled nozzle, by changing the orientation of the thrust force. Rocket rotation around roll axis is done through two reactive engines placed near the top of the rocket. An adaptive control law based on the concept of dynamic inversion is implemented. The controller contains mainly a linear dynamic compensator, a linear dynamic state estimator and a neural network that models the adaptive component of the control law, with role in the compensation of dynamic inversion error. The parameters of the model used in the dynamic inversion are permanently updated by an online identification block based on least squares method. Validation of theoretical results is done by numerical simulation.