System analysis and controller design for the electric pump of a deep-throttling rocket engine

Abstract This paper proposes a controller design for the electric pump of a deep-throttling rocket engine. The nonlinearity of the system is taken into consideration by analyzing the gap metric. Then, proportional-integral-derivative controller and gain-scheduling linear quadratic regulator are designed. Analyzing the amplitude- and phase-frequency characteristics as well as the pole-zero distribution of the system, the results show that the designed controllers can stabilize the linearized equations in incremental form at different operating points. This indicates that these two controllers are available for the original system in the whole range of working conditions and this is verified in the simulation. Meanwhile, the comparison between proportional-integral-derivative controller and gain-scheduling linear quadratic regulator is presented. It demonstrates that the proportional-integral-derivative controller is better at tracking both step and ramp signals but with worse control signals. It means that the proportional-integral-derivative controller seems less suitable for real use due to severe oscillations. Meanwhile, the parameter tuning of a proportional-integral-derivative controller depends on more extensive manual tuning. Therefore, the gain-scheduling linear quadratic regulator is preferred.