Dynamic-matching adaptive sliding mode control for hypersonic vehicles

Hypersonic vehicles exhibit significantly varied dynamic characteristics across different flight regimes. These characteristics, such as model uncertainties and actuator saturation levels, have strong time-varying properties, necessitating a control strategy capable of adaptively matching robustness and responsiveness to such variability. This paper introduces an adaptive sliding mode control strategy tailored for hypersonic vehicles, which dynamically aligns controller performance with the vehicle's varying dynamic properties. Initially, a quantitative model to characterize the dynamic uncertainty of the hypersonic vehicle is constructed, and an online adaptive method to estimate the bounds of model uncertainty is proposed. This method enables real-time adaptation of controller robustness. Furthermore, the study employs artificial potential functions for online estimating control saturation and actuation rates. It adaptively modulates the control response rate coefficients based on these estimations, effectively mitigating saturation while ensuring the rapid convergence of tracking errors. Additionally, the stability of the system is scrutinized through Lyapunov theory, which verifies that the tracking error remains uniformly ultimately bounded. The simulation results corroborate the efficacy of the proposed approach, illustrating advancements in robustness, responsiveness, chattering suppression, and saturation prevention.