Perpustakaan Digital ITB

In this 21st century, space explorations are now joined by private companies, such as SpaceX, which not only focused in conducting the space mission, but also to do it economically. Therefore, many reusable launcher vehicles (LVs) is being developed, which requires sophisticated control system to support its high-level maneuvers, such as the flip-over maneuver. Thrust Vectoring Control (TVC) becomes a solution for such control, since it has faster responses and it is robust to the flight environment, compared to conventional aerodynamic control. As the development of this technology takes a lot of experiments and may cost a lot, hardware in the loop simulator, or a demonstrator, can help in the learning and the development process. This research purpose is to design and build an indoor TVC demonstrator, using Electric Ducted Fan (EDF) as the thruster, that is capable of simulating the thrust control of a flight vehicle with high maneuverability, such as an LV. The system is limited with only one degree of freedom, the pitch rotational axis, to be focused more on the demonstrator hardware and control requirements. The research is done by doing a literature study, designing, manufacturing, and conducting several experiments of the system stabilization by measuring the deviation angle based on the thrust input. To simulate any instability, the system’s center of gravity (CG) is shifted 1.66 cm from the rotation axis, and hence provide a constant disturbance. A Flight Controller (FC) is used as the control mechanisms to stabilize pitch attitude. The demonstrator is then built and tested, and capable to stabilize itself to a certain extent using PID control algorithm. The demonstrator performs well in stabilizing the pitch, achievable with at least 50% of Thrust. Several steady state oscillations, however, are observed possibly due to the air recirculation and the CG offset. This result indicates the need to improve the hardware design. Nevertheless, the demonstrator provides a descent foundation for future research of TVC.