A New Approach to Motion Modeling and Autopilot Design of Skid-To-Turn Missiles

In this paper, we present a new approach to autopilot design for skid-to-turn missiles which may have severe aerodynamic cross-couplings and nonlinearities with angle of attack. The model of missile motion is derived in the maneuver plane and, based on that model, pitch, yaw, and roll autopilot are designed. They are composed of a nonlinear term which compensates for the aerodynamic couplings and nonlinearities and a linear controller driven by the measured outputs of missile accelerations and angular rates. Besides the outputs, further information such as Mach number, dynamic pressure, total angle of attack, and bank angle is required. With the proposed autopilot and simple estimators of bank angle and total angle of attack, it is shown by computer simulations that the induced moments and some aerodynamic nonlinearities are properly compensated and that the performance is superior to that of the conventional ones.