`rockets`

Simulation

The simulation was developed using Julia and is dependent on the following packages:

All may be imported via the using Pkg; Pkg.add(PACKAGE_NAME) command in the REPL.

The source code is not yet publicly available.

The program is organized into three modules:

Physics: contains data structures and functions to compute the motion of the rocket
LQR: contains data structures and functions to compute the control strategy of the rocket
Vis: contains data structures and functions for plotting and visualization of the flight

The program is designed to be run via test scripts. Each test script:

Defines the parameters of the rocket, including mass, maximum thrust, etc.
Defines the controller: cost function weights, setpoints, control limits
Defines the parameters of the simulation, such as time stepping and initial conditions
Executes a function called run_3dof() that executes the simulation and produces results data
Plots the state and control variables via plot_3dof_sol() and creates an animation via animate_scene()

The test script defines a discrete time step, but the equations of motion are integrated between time steps using numerical methods found in DifferentialEquations.jl - therefore, the control strategy is discrete, but the simulation itself is “piecewise-continuous”
User-defined composite types (structs) are used throughout to package data in meaningful ways for compatibility between functions in different modules
Physics of the landing legs are not modelled directly, but still used to determine if a landing was successful
The animations are created by manipulated Shape objects in Plots.jl; this is a similar approach to creating animations in MATLAB in that the library was not necessarily designed for this
The simulation does not execute in real-time with the animation - this was chosen specifically to separate the two functional portions of the program
Solving the simulation takes significantly less computational time than plotting the results, even with small time steps and long simulation run times