Integrated Pitch/Yaw Acceleration Controller for Projectile with Rotating Canards using Linear Quadratic Control Methodology

In this paper, an integrated pitch/yaw autopilot for the acceleration control of the projectile with rotating canards is proposed based on the linear quadratic control methodology. The pitch/yaw motions of such munitions are highly coupled so that it is not easy to control both pitch and yaw accelerations. As a remedy, we propose the integrated pitch/yaw output feedback structures based on the classical three-loop topology. Then, the optimal control gains are determined by solving the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem. The proposed autopilot is tested with nonlinear simulations to investigate its performance.