Within this thesis a set of tools is developed for creating and evaluating differentiable functions of two and three variables from tables of data in the Matlab ®environment. These functions, respectively known as bivariate and trivariate splines, are based on single variable cubic piecewise polynomial splines of each variable. For this reason they are easily differentiated, and by definition have continuous first and second order derivatives in each of their variables.
A Simulink model is also developed that simulates the flight characteristics of a six degree-of-freedom missile. This model utilizes the multivariate splining techniques to interpolate the missile's aerodynamic force and moment data. The simulation is capable of demonstrating the response of the missile to any arbitrary set of commanded input fin deflections. In addition, it provides a test platform that can be used to evaluate the performance of controllers developed for the missile.
A separate set of tools is developed to linearize the model about an arbitrary equilibrium configuration. This provides an initial step towards the development of gain scheduled controllers for the system.