Adaptive Backstepping Control for Longitudinal Dynamics of Hypersonic Vehicle Subject to Actuator Saturation and Disturbance

In this paper, an adaptive backstepping control strategy is presented to solve the longitudinal control problem for a hypersonic vehicle (HSV) subject to actuator saturation and disturbances. Small perturbation linearization transforms the dynamics to a seconded-order system at each trimming point, with total disturbance including unmodeled dynamics, parametric uncertainties, and external disturbances. The disturbance can be estimated and compensated for by an extended state observer (ESO), and thus the system is decoupled. To deal with the actuator saturation and wide flight envelope, an adaptive backstepping control strategy is designed. A rigorous proof of finite-time convergence is provided applying Lyapunov method. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified in simulations.