For defense as well as civilian applications, hypersonic vehicles offer significant

advantages. These vehicles, which are propelled by scramjet engines, promise to

provide both fast and economic mode of transportation. The Scramjet technology
was successfully demonstrated for the first time by the HyShot II program in
2002 [1, 2], which was followed by the successful flights of Hyper-X vehicles at
Mach 6.8 and 9.6 [3]. However, one of the main challenges in operating a
scramjet engine is initiating its ignition (and later sustaining it) [1]. The initiation
of its ignition needs to be done within the small operational window, for which
the initial speed needs to be within a small operational window in the hypersonic
region [4, 5]. FurthermoreIn addition, both the angle of attack as well as the pitch
attitude angle need to be very close to zero simultaneously [6]. In a typical
hypersonic technology demonstration mission, the hypersonic vehicle is mounted
on a carrier launch vehicle, which is supposed to inject it within the necessary
small operational window with very high precision (see Fig. 1 for a typical
trajectory).

Figure 1

To achieve the desired narrow operational window for initiation of the ignition of
the hypersonic vehicle is a highly challenging task for the guidance of the carrier
launch vehicle as it essentially means assuring those desired conditions with
very high precision despite having uncertainties in the system dynamics. For
operational reasons (such as quick response in defense applications) as well as
for reducing the cost of the mission, carrier launch vehicles are required to be
propelled by solid motors. However, a solid motor propelled suffers from the
severe drawback that the thrust-time curve cannot be predicted with high
accuracy apriori. In fact, online performance of any solid motor usually differs
from the predicted nominal performance, even though the total energy (i.e., the
area under the thrust-time curve) can be assured to remain fairly constant. In
addition, absence of online manipulation capability of the thrust magnitude as
well as the thrust cut-off facility only adds to the difficulties. Note that the
guidance logic should be sufficiently flexible and robust enough to cater for these
drawbacks and still be able to guide the vehicle to the desired final condition
with high precision. One should also note that while high precision at the end of
the trajectory of the launch vehicle is a bad necessity, the vehicle should also fly
within the specified path constraints for a few important reasons. Especially, the
structural load should always remain within the allowable limits, thereby
ensuring the safety of the vehicle. Moreover, the angle of attack value should
also remain bounded within allowable limits so that the inner loop autopilot can

be able to track it. In addition, the angle of attack should also be minimized
throughout the trajectory to make sure that it remains close to zero, so that it
can be generated by the inner-loop autopilot without running into the issue of
control saturation. This is because in an ascending trajectory the dynamic
pressure keeps on decreasing rapidly, thereby reducing the control effectiveness.
In the event that all of these intial conditions are not met, it can lead to
difficulties in the full operation of the scramjet engine. The operational and
nonoperational areas of a scramjet engine are best defined with the use of the
Kantrowitz limit. A pictorial depiction of this limit is placed in Fig X. The figure
below shows the regions of operations, non-operation and regions where the
engine might or might not work depending on the inlet conditions.

As an engine unstart is a serious issue and the performance of a scramjet engine is

sensitive to initial conditions, a detailed study of a engine unstart protection controller for the
X-43 is placed in [8]. The propulsion control system consists of a PI-feedforward controller.
Additionally, the control logic is implemented in a way to reduce the risk of an unstart. This
additional feature of the controller reduced the risk of an unstart by 36% by keeping the
isolator margin near or above the isolator margin goal, as shown by the Monte Carlo results.
[7]

[1]

B. Russell, G. Sullivan, and P. Allan, "The HyShot Scramjet Flight

Experiment - Flight Data and CFD Calculations Compared," in 12th AIAA
International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies, ed:
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2003.

[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]

[6]
[7]

M. K. Smart, N. E. Hass, and A. Paull, "Flight Data Analysis of the HyShot 2

Scramjet Flight Experiment," AIAA Journal, vol. 44, pp. 2366-2375,
2006/10/01 2006.
H. Ogawa, A. L. Grainger, and R. R. Boyce, "Inlet Starting of HighContraction Axisymmetric Scramjets," Journal of Propulsion and Power, vol.
26, pp. 1247-1258, 2010/11/01 2010.
Y. Du and X. Zhang, "Design of scramjet engine fuel feed system scheme,"
in Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI), 2013 10th
International Conference on, 2013, pp. 412-417.
C. Michael, A. V. S. Paul, and T. Sandy, "An Attitude Control Strategy Using
Four Cold Gas Thrusters for the SCRAMSPACE 1 Experiment," in 18th
AIAA/3AF International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and
Technologies Conference, ed: American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, 2012.
C. Segal, "Scramjet Engine - Processes and Characteristics," ed:
Cambridge University Press.
P. Dawid, B. Sanchito, S. Michael, and A. C. Michael, "Longitudinal Control
Strategy for Hypersonic Accelerating Vehicles," in AIAA Guidance,
Navigation, and Control (GNC) Conference, ed: American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2013.

[8] http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88763main_H-2540.pdf - cant seem

to find a peer reviewed version of this..