By: Gaurav Kumar Verma

Missile
Missile may be any thrown or launched object, it colloquially almost always refers to a selfpropelled guided weapon system.

Targeting and/or guidance Flight system Engine Warhead

Surface-toSurface/Air-toSurface 1. Ballistic 2.Cruise 3. Anti-ship 4. Anti-tank

Surface-to-air

1.Anti-aircraft 2. Anti Ballistic

Missile guidance refers to a variety of methods of guiding a missile or a guided bomb to its intended target. The missile's target accuracy is a critical factor for its effectiveness. Guidance systems improve missile accuracy

A servomechanism, or servo, is an automatic device that uses error-sensing negative feedback to correct the performance of a mechanism.The term correctly applies only to systems where the feedback or error-correction signals help control mechanical position, speed or other parameters.

An autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. the autopilot refers to the missile airframe dynamics and associated stability augmentation system, which is designed so that the missile lateral acceleration follows the autopilot acceleration commands as closely as possible

1 Roll Position Autopilot 2 Pitch autopilot 3 Yaw Autopilot

The basic function of the roll autopilot is to rollrate stabilize the missile, that is, to provide missile stabilization of roll attitude about the longitudinal axis. This is accomplished by sensing roll rate, and using the signal to deflect the fins (or wings) by an amount sufficient to counteract roll disturbances.

Airframe misalignments. Asymmetrical loading of the lifting and control surfaces at supersonic speeds. Atmospheric disturbances, if the missile is made to fly close to the sea or ground.

Basically, the pitch/yaw autopilots (also known as lateral autopilots) each consist of a major accelerometer feedback loop that provides the desired conversion of commanded acceleration to missile acceleration, and a minor rate feedback loop that provides the necessary damping of missile pitch or yaw rates.

Maintenance of near-constant steady state aerodynamic gain. Increase frequency. Increase damping. Reduce cross-coupling between pitch and yaw motion Assistance in gathering.

Thus we find that when the unmodelled dynamics of the servo and gyro are neglected, roll autopilot system is shown to be stable. However when the servo dynamics are included the system becomes unstable. Thus the role of the control engineer is to design the system such as to make it robustly stable. The system can be made stable by including a phase lag network. However the phase margin that can be attained is very marginal and the bandwidth and gain margin reduces. Control engineers design the phase margin to be at least 50 degrees and a bandwidth of around 150 rad/s to overcome any possible unforeseen disturbance in flight. Thus by including a phase lead network also, the phase margin of 46 degrees is attained which is considered adequate. Also bandwidth is 147 rad/s at gain margin of 11 dB, which is also adequate. In a similar manner, a lateral autopilot also can be designed to be robustly stable.