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Lateral pulse jet control of a direct fire atmospheric rocket using an inertial measurement unit sensor system

Impact point dispersion of a direct fire rocket can be drastically reduced
with a ring of appropriately sized lateral pulse jets coupled to a trajectory tracking
flight control system. The system is shown to work well against uncertainty in the
form of initial off-axis angular velocity perturbations as well as atmospheric winds.
For an example case examined, dispersion was reduced by a factor of one hundred.
Dispersion reduction and mean miss distance are strong functions of the number of
individual pulse jets, the pulse jet impulse, and the trajectory tracking window size.
Proper selection of these parameters for a particular rocket and launcher
combination is required to achieve optimum dispersion reduction to the pulse jet
control mechanism. For the lateral pulse jet control mechanism that falls into the
category of an impulse control mechanism, the trajectory tracking flight control law
provides better reduction in dispersion and mean miss distance than the
proportional navigation guidance law especially when small number of individual
pulse jets is used.
Estimation of body frame components of angular velocity and angular
acceleration of a rigid body projectile undergoing general three-dimensional motion
using linear acceleration measurements is considered. The results are comparable
to those obtained from a conventional Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that
composes of accelerometers and gyroscopes. From the study of the effect of sensor
errors to the measurement and the control performance, the sensitivity of the
angular rate estimation to the sensor noise is a strong function of the constellation
of these three accelerometers. When more than three point measurements are used,
the most effective method to fuse data is with one cluster that contains all sensors.
In the conventional IMU, the dispersion and miss distance are less sensitive to the
errors from accelerometers than to the gyroscopes. The estimation of angular rates
plays essential roles in the performance of the control system in the reduction of
dispersion and miss distance. The use of many accelerometers does not guarantee
to reduce the sensitivity to errors. The selection of constellation among
accelerometers in the data fusion process must be carefully taken into account. / Graduation date: 2002

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/32379
Date19 July 2001
CreatorsJitpraphai, Thanat
ContributorsCostello, Mark F.
Source SetsOregon State University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation

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