Moving mass flight vehicle is a strongly nonlinear system under high speed flying conditions. The system attitude dynamics becomes even more complex due to the coupling between the internal moving mass with large mass ratio and the vehicle body. This article investigates the open-loop nonlinear dynamics of a novel flight vehicle with pitch-control single moving mass from the prospective of bifurcation theory and continuation methods. Of particular interest is the influence of moving mass parameters on the number of system equilibrium points, stability of equilibrium curves, bifurcation characteristics, and the longitudinal static stability. Numerical results reveal the bifurcation phenomena existing in the proposed flight vehicle; the generated bifurcation diagrams illustrate that the multiple sets of limit points and Hopf points divide the moving mass parameter space into different regions with different values and types of stability, thus indicating the significant role of the moving mass parameters in the system nonlinear dynamics. Finally, a design strategy for the moving mass parameters is concluded based on the bifurcation analysis results.
Nonlinear dynamics systems - bifurcations, continuation methods, periodic solutions