Fast terminal sliding mode tracking control of hypersonic vehicles based on non-homogeneous disturbance observer

The tracking control problem of hypersonic vehicles is studied and analyzed in this paper using terminal sliding mode control method (TSMC) and non-homogeneous disturbance observer(NHDO) considering parametric uncertainty and external disturbances. Non-singular terminal sliding mode controller is provided based on NHDO. The key idea is that the NHDO is adopted to estimate the aerodynamic uncertainties and external disturbances simultaneously, which can enhance the robustness of the system and lower the gain of the switch controller. Rigorous stability analysis for the closed-loop system is given via Lyapunov stability theory, which proves that the system states are always bounded even during the estimation process when the estimation error is not zero. The sliding manifold can be reached in finite time and the tracking errors can converge to zero asymptotically. Numerical simulations are conducted with the longitudinal nonlinear dynamic model of hypersonic vehicles to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the designed controller.