Design and Verification of Attitude Control System for a Boost-Glide Rocket

The boost-glide rocket needs to maneuver in the atmosphere with complex flight conditions, which is a big challenge for the attitude control system. In this paper, the design process of the control system is analyzed. With specific points of the flight trajectory, the design of an improved proportional-integrative-derivative (PID) controller based on the small perturbation theory is carried out. Design approach of the attitude control system is verified by the six-degree-freedom model simulation. The rocket flight control program is written to the onboard computer so that hardware-in-the-loop simulation experiment is completed. Experimental results show that the mean and standard deviation of the error between simulation value and experiment value are below 0.5°, so the control parameters and design method are reasonable with a great attitude tracking effect. This paper proposes the design and verification method of a boost-glide rocket attitude control system, which can provide a reference for design of the boost-glide rocket around the world.