Interval analysis applied to re-entry flight trajectory optimization

Interval analysis applied to re-entry flight trajectory optimization

Chu, W.

Mulder, J. (mentor)
Mooij, E. (mentor)
van Kampen, E. (mentor)
Chu, Q.P. (mentor)
de Weerdt, E. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

2007-07-26

Trajectory optimization is an essential part of space plane mission design. One important aspect of trajectory optimization for re-entry vehicles is to minimize the total heat load at the surface when it returns and the heat flux should remain below certain limit, meanwhile, the vehicle should land at the desired point. The methods used for re-entry trajectory optimization is quite successful by now. However, if the model is non-linear, such as the reentry vehicle, by using the classical optimization method, we can only find the local minimum and the global minimum is never guaranteed. An innovative way of finding the global minimum heat load for the trajectory design is introduced, namely the interval analysis for global optimization. In this thesis, the basic concept of the interval arithmetic is introduced. The main idea of the interval arithmetic is to use small intervals for the calculation instead of numbers. As the interval algorithm has a characteristics to check all the numbers within the interval and contain all the feasible solutions, guaranteed global optimum can be found eventually. In this report, interval method is used in both static global optimization and dynamic global optimization problem. The application to interval analysis to static optimization problem is very successful. However, although the application to interval analysis to dynamic system can successfully find the global optimum, the interval global optimization method still suffer greatly for the dependency problem, the wrapping effect, and huge number of feasible solutions. We apply the interval algorithm to find a guaranteed global minimum total heat load for reentry flight trajectory design, find the difficulties and give recommendations for improvements. This thesis serves as a feasibility study using interval analysis for non-linear trajectory optimization of re-entry vehicles.

interval analysis
trajectory optimization
re-entry

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:97730ff5-ccbf-4809-8a79-2e3856c266f4

TU Delft, Aerospace Engineering, Control and Simulation

2016-06-01

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2007 W. Chu