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International audience; Reusable liquid-propellant rocket engines (LPREs) imply more demanding robustness requirements than expendable ones due to their extended capabilities. Therefore, the goal of this work was to develop a control loop adapted to all the operating phases of LPRE, including transients, and robust to internal parametric variations. Firstly, thermo-fluid-dynamic simulators representative of the gas-generator-cycle engines were built. These simulators were subsequently translated into nonlinear state-space models. Based on these models, the continuous subphase of the start-up transient is controlled to track precomputed reference trajectories. Beyond the start-up, throttling scenarios are managed with end-state-tracking algorithm. Model Predictive Control has been applied in a linearised manner with robustness considerations to both scenarios, in which a set of hard state and control constraints must be respected. Tracking of pressure (thrust) and mixture-ratio operating points within the design envelope is achieved in simulation while respecting constraints. Robustness to variations in the predominant parameters, to external state perturbations and to the possible impact of an observer on the loop, is demonstrated.

International audience; The main purpose of this survey paper is to review the field of convergence between the liquid-propellant rocket-propulsion and automatic-control disciplines. A comprehensive collection of academic works and some industrial developments are summarised and discussed, making the link to the current context of launcher reusability. The main control problem in liquid-propellant rocket engines (LPRE), the target of this survey, generally consists in tracking set-points in combustion-chamber pressure and mixture ratio, their main operating quantities. This goal is attained via the adjustment of flow-control valves while complying with operating constraints. Each aspect of control systems, ranging from modelling to the actual control techniques, is reviewed and subsequently related to the rest of aspects. The comparison of the different approaches points to the general use of linearised models about concrete operating points for deriving steady-state controllers, which in most cases are of PID type. Other more sophisticated approaches present in the literature, incorporating some nonlinear, hybrid or robust techniques, improve certain aspects of performance and robustness. Nevertheless, no fully nonlinear or hybrid frameworks, which may allow the control of a wider throttling domain, have been published. In addition, control during the thermally and structurally demanding transient phases is usually in open loop, and hence with low correction margins. This sort of control enhancements, probably together with more sophisticated monitoring architectures, would serve to extend the life of LPRE, a significant factor in their reusability. Therefore, this survey intends to draw a path for the future control design trends which will certainly be more suitable for reusable LPRE.

The current context of launchers reusability requires the improvement of control algorithms for their liquid-propellant rocket engines. Their transient phases are generally still performed in open loop. In this paper, it is aimed at enhancing the control performance and robustness during the fully continuous phase of the start-up transient of a generic gas-generator cycle. The main control goals concern end-state tracking in terms of combustion-chamber pressure and chambers mixture ratios, as well as the verification of a set of hard operational constraints. A controller based on a nonlinear preprocessor and on linear MPC (Model-Predictive Control) has been synthesised, making use of nonlinear state-space models of the engine. The former generates the full-state reference to be tracked while the latter achieves the aforementioned goals with sufficient accuracy and verifying constraints for the required pressure levels. Robustness considerations are included in the MPC algorithm via an epigraph formulation of the minimax robust optimisation problem, where a finite set of perturbation scenarios is considered., Comment: IFAC ACA 2019, Cranfield, UK. 6 pages

A dynamic model of a liquid-propellant rocket engine has been developed in this paper, with the future purpose of meeting the more demanding requirements of rocket-engines control forced by the new reusability scenarios. This transientrepresentative modelling approach has been carried out in two phases: initially the purely thermodynamic modelling and subsequently its adaptation to the control framework. The former was tackled by building first a representative simulator of the well-known Vulcain engine. The differential equations considered come from mass, momentum and energy conservation equations and from turbo-pump dynamics. In general, macroscopic behavior at component and system levels is considered. Once this simulator started to provide satisfactory results, it was translated into a state-space model for control by symbolically joining all components’ equations, which led to a set of differential equations capturing system’s global behaviour. Its states consist in mass flows, pressures, temperatures and shaft rotational speeds. The available actuators are five continuously-controllable valves, one binary igniter and one binary starter. That combination of continuous and discrete features forces the definition of a hybrid system in the control sense. The analysis of its dynamic characteristics points to a good controllability of thrust via the gas-generator injection valves, and of mixture ratio via the turbines’ flow-distribution valve.