PSO Algorithm for Planetary Atmosphere Entry Vehicles Multidisciplinary Guidance Design

The paper presents a possible approach to define - within the same global optimization the guidance history and the configuration of each different flight regime an atmospheric Entry-Descent-Landing (EDL) vehicle has to deal with. Precision landing constraints as well as inertial and thermal loads containment are considered. The optimization is focused on detecting a set of possible preliminary solutions to be further investigated by a local finer optimizer. A partially revisited Particle Swarm Optimization technique has been here successfully applied to deal with both a multiobjective and distributed optimization architecture specifically thought to cope with the complexity of the proposed problem. The proposed approach turned out to be powerful in identifying, quite rapidly, a set of feasible good solutions both from the guidance and the configuration point of view for each of the aerodynamics phases the probe goes through