Attitude control of reentry vehicle with a pitch-control single moving mass

Since the point moving mass configuration cannot be implemented in engineering applications, a novel configuration of moving mass with large mass ratio and reaction jet is proposed. This configuration has a great advantage in engineering application as well as improving the vehicle's maneuverability. According to the dynamic analysis, the moving mass with large mass ratio leads to the coupling between the attitude and the deflection angle of moving mass and the dynamic behavior of flight vehicle can be affected by the momentum exchange. Therefore, the moving mass cannot be regarded as a point mass. A disturbance observer is investigated for this strong coupling nonlinear system, which estimates the total disturbance which contains the nonlinear couples and un-modeled disturbances. Then, a control law based on feedback linearization is used for compensation. The simulation results show that the proposed configuration is feasible and validate the quality of the adaptive controller which ensures a good performance.