Book Description
A quaternion-based attitude control system is developed for the X-33 in the ascent flight phase. A nonlinear control law commands body-axis rotation rates that align the angular velocity vector with an Euler axis defining the axis of rotation that will rotate the body-axis system into a desired-axis system. The magnitudes of the commanded body rates are determined by the magnitude of the rotation error. The commanded body rates form the input to a dynamic inversion-based adaptive/reconfigurable control law. The indirect adaptive control portion of the control law uses online system identification to estimate the current control effectiveness matrix to update a control allocation module. The control allocation nominally operates in a minimum deflection mode; however, if a fault is detected, it can operate in a null-space injection mode that excites and decorrelates the effectors without degrading the vehicle response to enable online system identification. The overall 5 stem is designed to provide fault and damage tolerance for the X-33 on ascent.