Investigation on energy-effective guidance-to-collision strategies for exo-atmospheric interceptors

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate energy-effective guidance-to-collision strategies for an exo-atmospheric interceptor producing the normal and axial accelerations independently. According to the utilization of the two accelerations, three interception strategies are possible from the collision geometry and the nonlinear engagement kinematics. A unified form of guidance-to-collision laws realizing these interception strategies is then determined by solving a nonlinear finite-time tracking problem for the heading error based on a specific form of the error dynamics. The characteristics of the proposed guidance-to-collision laws for different interception strategies are analytically analyzed. The results show that the guidance-to-collision strategy using normal and axial acceleration simultaneously is always advantageous in control energy efficiency. Additionally, the characteristic of the guidance-to-collision law for this interception strategy is compared with existing guidance laws. It turns out that the guidance to-collision law behaves like the true proportional navigation (TPN) guidance in a near-collision course. This fact could provide new insight into the behavior of TPN in the nonlinear engagement kinematics from the collision geometry standpoint. Additionally, analysis results also show that the proposed law is effectively working even in the presence of a large initial heading error compared to TPN due to the nonlinear nature of the proposed method in the collision geometry. Finally, our findings are verified through numerical simulations. (c) 2022 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.