Reviews and Challenges in Reliability Design of Long March Launcher Control Systems

This paper reviews the development of reliability design technology as well as challenges encountered thus far regarding control systems for long march launch vehicles (LMLVs). Along with the high frequency of space launches, the target of “increasing the success rate by one percentage point” has been proposed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology for LMLVs. In this context, the features of the representative launchers in the reliability design of control systems are reviewed first, especially from an industrial perspective. Thereafter, the techniques applied by LMLV control systems are presented using a five-level hierarchical architecture: fundamentals, self-repair, multiple module redundancy, fault-tolerant control, and fault-tolerant guidance. This is followed by a detailed discussion on the reliability design in LMLV navigation, guidance, control, and avionics subsystems. Finally, the challenges are addressed, which encompass the cost-oriented reliability design, the fault-tolerant control to suppress out-of-tolerance behaviors, and the fault-tolerant guidance to replan the mission autonomously under critical faults. The techniques under development for LMLVs in these areas are also summarized.