Pitch Axis Control for a Guided Projectile in a Wind Tunnel-based Hardware-in-The-Loop Setup

Guillaume Strub (1) , Spilios Theodoulis (1) , Vincent Gassmann (1) , Simona Dobre (1) , Michel Basset (2)

1 ISL - Institut franco-allemand de recherches de Saint-Louis
2 MIPS - Modélisation, Intelligence, Processus et Système

This article details the design of a pitch axis autopilot for an 80mm fin-stabilized, canard-guided projectile and its validation on a Hardware-In-the-Loop test setup. This setup is built around an autonomous projectile prototype, which is installed in the test section of a wind tunnel by the means of a 3-DoF gimbaled structure. The autopilot design is based on a family of linearized dynamic models of the projectile, whose parameters were estimated from experimental data. Several control approaches are considered. Using the H1 robust control framework, a full-order disturbance rejection controller is designed, taking into account the limited actuator dynamics. A fixed-order, fixed-structure controller of lower complexity with the same performance objective is also designed, using a nonsmooth H1 technique. The tracking performance of these controllers is improved with the addition of a feedforward controller. A final approach considers the disturbance rejection and reference tracking as a multi-objective problem, where the feedback and the feedforward controllers are designed in a single step. The performance of these approaches is then assessed and compared using numerical simulation as well as experimental results gathered from the Hardware-In-the-Loop setup.

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Guillaume Strub, Spilios Theodoulis, Vincent Gassmann, Simona Dobre, Michel Basset. Pitch Axis Control for a Guided Projectile in a Wind Tunnel-based Hardware-in-The-Loop Setup. AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 2015, ⟨10.2514/6.2015-0153⟩. ⟨hal-01289585⟩