Ascent guidance law for a horizontal take-off vehicle with a multi-combined cycle engine

This paper researches the ascent guidance law for the vehicle with a multi-combined cycle propulsion. The guidance law comprises two parts, namely, the off-line optimal trajectories generation and online guidance. With respect to the off-line part, disturbances are discretized and incorporated into the trajectory optimization problem; subsequently, a set of trajectories is calculated to constitute a database. To quickly obtain a database that comprises a large number of trajectories, a novel ascent profile is proposed with respect to height and velocity. Based on this profile, only inequity constraints exist in the optimization model, and the original optimization problem is converted to a parameter searching problem. The optimal trajectories are calculated using a hybrid optimization method that comprises a particle swarm optimization (PSO) method and the Hooke-Jeeves (HJ) method. With respect to online guidance, the profile is updated using a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) based on the current flight states and the database. Simulation validates the efficiency of the proposed optimization method by comparing the method with the pseudospectral method; the robustness of the guidance law is also validated using Monte Carlo simulation.