CLOS Flight Path Design and Analysis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Head of the Electronics and Communications Department, Pyramids High Institute for Engineering and Technology, 6-October, Cairo, Egypt.

2 Egyptian Armed Forces, Egypt.

Abstract

Antitank guided missiles are commanded to the line of sight (CLOS) against ground and short range armored targets. Among the CLOS guided missile systems is the tubelaunched optically-tracked guided-weapon (TOW) and it belongs to the second generation. This antitank guided missile is considered for the present work to improve its performance via
classical and robust synthesis of autopilot. The design and analysis necessitates somehow accurate modeling, linearized models, and autopilot design techniques with different uncertainties. This paper is devoted to the derivation of the system equations of motion clarifying different sources of uncertainty, where the solution of these equations is described
in the form of modules programmed within the MATLAB environments. The simulation is conducted with different engagement-range scenarios and validated against some reference data and verified for performance requirements including the time of flight, miss distance, and fin deflections. The missile-control system transfer functions representing the system dynamics in pitch and yaw planes are derived based on the designed 6DOF simulation model. These transfer
functions are utilized for classical and robust autopilot design and analysis to clarify its capability to stabilize the system in presence of un-modeled dynamics and satisfy the performance requirements with disturbance rejection and measurement noise attenuation. The final autopilot is then utilized within the 6DOF simulation for evaluation against flight path parameters with previous work and reference flight data. The designed autopilot achieved flight path engagements with higher level of noise than previous works and less miss distance. The future work is concerned with the inclusion of roll channel autopilot in addition to the guidance unit and evaluating the system performance.

Keywords