Linear Parameter Varying Control Synthesis for the atmospheric phase VEGA launcher

This article presents the design of the atmospheric control system of a launch vehicle using the Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) synthesis technique. The main goal is to facilitate the transfer of this technique, already well known for providing a systematic design approach with reduced effort, to the European launcher industrial domain. In this paper, a grid-based LPV approach is applied to the actual VEGA VV05 mission data for the joint design of the rigid-body controller and the flexible bending filter in one single design procedure. The LPV controller is analysed in terms of classical linear stability margins and evaluated and compared with the VEGA baseline controller via Monte-Carlo analyses using a high-fidelity, nonlinear simulator. The results show that the LPV controller provides satisfactory stability margins and excellent performance and robustness characteristics while offering a more systematic and methodological design approach.