A new formulation for the epsilon method applied to the minimum-time-to-climb problem

Abstract

Balakrishnan's epsilon technique is used to compute minimum-time profiles for the F-104 airplane. This technique differs from the classical gradient method in that a quadratic penalty on the error in satisfying the equation of motion is included in the cost function to be minimized as a means of eliminating the requirement of satisfying the equations of motion. Although the number of unknown independent functions is increased to include the state variables, the evaluation of the gradient of the cost function is simplified, resulting in considerable computational savings, thereby making it appear feasible to use the epsilon method for real-time application.