Robust Joint Chance-Constrained Trajectory Optimization of a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle with Thermal and No-Fly Zone Constraints

Date

2025-8-27

Author

Gözlükaya, Ekin

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

100
views

0
downloads

Cite This

Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) are advanced air systems which glide in atmosphere with speeds exceeding Mach 5. These vehicles operate under extreme thermal and structural conditions, making trajectory planning a challenging task. These conditions are further complicated by uncertainties in navigation and environmental parameters, which can cause deviations from the planned trajectory and increase the risk of violating mission-critical constraints. This thesis presents a robust trajectory optimization framework for HGVs that perform gliding flight from reentry to ground impact. The vehicle is modeled using a three-degree-of-freedom (3-DoF) dynamic formulation with two control inputs: angle of attack and bank angle. The optimization problem incorporates uncertainties in vehicle states and atmospheric conditions, and aims to ensure the satisfaction of thermal and geographic no-fly zone (NFZ) constraints. A joint chance-constrained optimization ( Joint-CCO) approach is adopted to probabilistically enforce two critical constraints: the stagnation point heat flux limit and the avoidance of predefined NFZ. The problem is solved using a Sequential Convex Programming (SCP) strategy, which enables the efficient handling of nonlinear dynamics and non-convex constraints by solving a series of convex subproblems. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through Monte Carlo simulations that evaluate constraint satisfaction under sampled uncertainties. Results demonstrate that the framework successfully maintains safety margins under uncertainty while achieving feasible and computationally efficient trajectories for both terminal and reentry phases of HGV flight.

Subject Keywords

Hypersonic Glide Vehicle, Robust Trajectory Planning, Joint Chance-Constrained Optimization, No-Fly Zone Constraint, Aerothermal Load Limitation

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/116658

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis