Analytical solution for the skip trajectory of hypersonic vehicles with time-varying aerodynamic coefficients

An analytical method is proposed for calculating the altitude and flight path angle of hypersonic vehicles' skip trajectories under the influence of arbitrary time-varying aerodynamic coefficients. First, a longitudinal plane dynamics equation is established based on the inertial Earth model and the specific kinetic energy is introduced as independent variable to simplify the derivation. Subsequently, the solution is obtained through the perturbation method, where the zero-order analytical solution is based on existing literature, and the first-order linear time-varying system is decoupled through matrix linear transformation. Finally, by comparing numerical integration and analytical solutions with constant aerodynamic coefficients, the precision of this method in dealing with time-varying aerodynamic coefficients is verified, demonstrating its advantages over analytical solutions with constant aerodynamic coefficients.