Reliable Control for Hypersonic Variable Sweep Vehicles Based on Non-Fragile Model Prediction

This paper addresses the tracking problem of hypersonic variable-sweep vehicles (HVSVs) subject to model uncertainties and feedback gain perturbations. Neglecting feedback gain perturbations in controller design can degrade tracking performance and compromise control reliability. To address this issue, a non-fragile tube model predictive control (MPC) method is proposed in this paper. A polytopic linear parameter-varying model is established to describe the vehicle’s dynamics. The reliable tracking control is designed within the tube MPC framework, integrating a non-fragile robust feedback control law and a nominal MPC term. Sufficient conditions are derived for designing the feedback gain under prescribed gain perturbations. By the resulting non-fragile control law, it has been analyzed that the tracking errors between the actual vehicle system and the nominal vehicle system are constrained to the computed robust positively invariant set under perturbed feedback control. In the nominal MPC layer, the feedforward control inputs are obtained by solving a quadratic programming problem with tightened constraints, which is formulated based on the nominal vehicle system. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve steady and accurate trajectory tracking with the enhancement of reliability to perturbed feedback control during the process of variable sweep wing.