Adaptive Thrust Regulation in Solid-fuel Ramjet with Variable Geometry Inlet

Abstract: This paper presents the application of a novel data-driven adaptive control technique, dynamic mode adaptive control (DMAC), to regulate thrust in a solid-fuel ramjet (SFRJ). A quasi-static one-dimensional model of SFRJ with a variable geometry inlet is developed to compute thrust. An adaptive tracking controller is then designed using the DMAC framework, which leverages dynamic mode decomposition to approximate the local system behavior, followed by a tracking controller designed around the identified model. Simulation results demonstrate that DMAC achieves accurate thrust regulation across a range of commanded profiles and operating conditions, without requiring an analytical model of the SFRJ. These findings indicate that DMAC provides a reliable and effective approach for model-free thrust regulation in an SFRJ with variable-geometry inlets as the control input.