Trajectory optimization of a lifting re-entry vehicle

Date

2024-12-6

Author

Kaçmaz, Sibel

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Lifting re-entry trajectory optimization for hypersonic vehicles has attracted significant global attention, particularly within the defense industry due to their exceptional speed and range capabilities. Despite the numerous advantages of hypersonic vehicles, they present critical issues, such as extreme heat transfer challenges and load factors that exceed human tolerance in both magnitude and duration. This thesis aims to optimize the trajectory of a lifting re-entry vehicle through angle of attack and bank angle control, focusing on maximizing cross-range and minimizing peak aerodynamic heating rate as multiple objective functions while considering constraints on dynamic pressure, load factor, and angular rates. In this study, the ICLOCS2 (Imperial College London Optimal Control) software is used as the optimization tool. Direct collocation is chosen as the transcription method, the Hermite-Simpson method is employed as the discretization technique, and IPOPT (Interior Point OPTimizer) is selected as the NLP (Nonlinear Programming) solver.

Subject Keywords

Lifting re-entry, Trajectory optimization, Hypersonic vehicle, Heat transfer, Direct collocation

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/112987

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis