The terminal stage of a minimum-time mission of a high—performance aircraft is
studied using both a reduced-order "energy" model formulation and a point-mass model
formulation of the aircraft.
The mission is confined to vertical plane maneuvers, and is defined as consisting of
three stages; a climb to the dash point,a steady-state dash at the high velocity point, and
finally, a terminal transient from the dash point to the final state. This terminal maneuver evolves outside of the flight envelope, rapidly decreasing altitude while increasing the velocity to values greater than the dash velocity. The velocity then decreases from this maximum value as required in order to meet the final state
specification.
Some of the trajectories that are generated during this terminal transient maneuver
experience dynamic pressures that will exceed the dynamic pressure limit unless a constraint is placed on the state variables. Because of the need for enforcing this state constraint, a direct adjoining method for handling state constraints in the optimal control problem is studied. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the application of this method of handling state constraints for the case of the dynamic pressure limit.
Finally, trajectories are generated that lead from the dash point to a ünal state having lower altitude and energy values than those of the dash point, and observations are made concerning the characteristics of these maneuvers.
next to an author's name indicates that all files or directories associated with their ETD are accessible from the Virginia Tech campus network only.
![[VT]](http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/images/ETD-db/restricted.gif)
