ABSTRACT
This chapter conducts a bifurcation analysis for the inertial coupling problem that may occur in the case of automatic flight control system failures of a reentry vehicle. Equilibrium paths are first obtained with the use of the continuation method in the planes of the vehicle’s motion variables vs. control surface angles. Over all the ranges of the equilibrium paths, stability analyses are then undertaken by means of Lyapunov’s first method. Special emphasis is put on the convergence nature of the motion variables’ temporal trajectories for the case where more than one stable equilibrium point exists for a combination of control surface angles. Based on the equilibrium paths with stability information, the control sequences of control surface angles are finally sought that may bring the vehicle in a high roll rate motion back to a zero roll rate steady-state flight. It is pointed out that a steady flight with no roll-rate can be recovered only if the basic solution branch is stable.
