In this paper, a novel adaptive finite-time control of air-breathing hypersonic vehicles is proposed. Based on the immersion and invariance theory, an adaptive finite-time control method for general second-order systems is first derived, using nonsingular terminal sliding mode scheme. Then the method is applied to the control system design of a flexible air-breathing vehicle model, whose dynamics can be decoupled into first-order and second-order subsystems by time-scale separation principle. The main features of this hypersonic vehicle control system lie in the design flexibility of the parameter adaptive laws and the rapid convergence to the equilibrium point. Finally, simulations are conducted, which demonstrate that the control system has the features of fast and accurate tracking to command trajectories and strong robustness to parametric and non-parametric uncertainties.
