Sliding mode controller for air-breathing hypersonic vehicle with flexible body dynamics

A brief introduction to the Truth Model, a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle, developed by Bolender and Doman is given. The model is used only for simulation and control design verification. And the linear equations of motion of the longitudinal dynamics for hypersonic vehicle derived from the Truth Model are obtained based on Jacobian Linearization approach. In this study, a sliding mode controller design based on the approach law is applied to the model of the longitudinal dynamics for the hypersonic vehicle. Finally, the simulation results using sliding mode controller with the approach law are shown. Simulation results demonstrate that the designed controller has robust tracking performance.