Abstract A supercavitating underwater vehicle uses gas or vapor to reduce its skin friction enabling it travel up speeds of 200 m/s. However, traveling at extreme can be challenging for control design since sudden disturbances faults, even a short time, lead large deviations from the reference trajectory. This paper addresses problem controlling which incorporates actuator constraints and loss ...

I (GB) was fortunate that early in my career I had the opportunity to work with Keith Glover. Keith had just begun his obsession with golf. A simple game where a ball stands still and the player advances it from different parts of the landscape into a hole. During a golf outing, Keith vigorously struck a ball off the fairway. It drove through a water hazard and miraculously ended up a few feet ...

In this manuscript, a new method is proposed to provide a perfect tracking of the supercavitation system based on a new two-state model. The tracking of the pitch rate and angle of attack for fin and cavitator input is of the aim. The pitch rate of the supercavitation with respect to fin angle is found as a non-minimum phase behavior. This effect reduces the speed of command pitch rate. Control...

At very high speeds, bubbles form in the underwater vehicles because of sharp trailing edges or of places where the local pressure is lower than the vapor pressure. These bubbles are called cavities and the size of the cavities grows as the velocity increases. A properly designed cavitator can induce the formation of a single big cavity all over the vehicle. Such a vehicle travelling in the vap...