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Optimal Trajectory Planning for Aircraft Microgravity Atmospheric Maneuver

Saki, Reza | 2020

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 53654 (45)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Aerospace Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Pourtakdoust, Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. The purpose of the current study is to design an optimal trajectory and control for an aircraft to perform a microgravity maneuver automatically. This subject is by itself an important research topic that has not yet been attempted via optimal control formulation and modelling. Space stations are commonly utilized to conduct long-term microgravity research. Unfortunately utility of space stations to perform space based microgravity experiments is expensive and inaccessible for many researchers and scientific institutions. However, since many experiments requiring microgravity conditions can be performed in short time intervals, there is a possibility to meet their demand via optimal trajectory and motion planning of some specific aircrafts. In this regard, the microgravity maneuver planning of aircraft has been attempted within the framework of an optimal control problem whose optimality equations have been determined via the variational approach. The nature of the optimal control methodology allows for the selection and utility of a performance measure that within the process of minimizing the aircraft load factor leads to an integrated microgravity path with acceptable durability. Experimental and other existing microgravity flights and simulations via other approaches have also been investigated and compared in the current research. For verification purposes of the current results, the maneuver equations have been numerically extracted using two methods of steepest descent and BFGS where the states and controls time histories are compared with recent works. As predicted, the resulting optimal path is parabolic, where the aircraft pitch attitude has changed from +50° to -50°. In addition the microgravity maneuver has been extracted with an accuracy of 10-6
  9. Keywords:
  10. Microgravity ; Variational Method ; Steepest Descent Method ; Load Factor ; Optimal Trajectory ; Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno Algorithm ; Optimal Trajectory Planning

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