The Reentry Trajectory Optimization for Lifting Vehicle by Using Gauss Pseudospectral Method

Abstract

To obtain the flight trajectory for lifting vehicle after reentry atmosphere, the Gauss pseudospectral method is used to convert the reentry trajectory optimization problem of three-dimension for the vehicle into a nonlinear programming problem. The path constraints include the heat flux peak on stagnation point and maximum dynamic pressure and the terminal constraints include the vehicle’s height and position, and the optimal performance index is the minimum total heat absorption. The angle of attack and bank angle are chosen as control variables. The result of simulation indicates that the GPM is effective to solve trajectory optimization problem, and can satisfy the above optimization index and constraint condition.