Intelligent Safety Control and Actuation Technologies for Aerospace Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Advances in aerospace vehicle systems—such as aerodynamic and orbital vehicles, hypersonic aircraft, and reusable spaceplanes—demand unprecedented reliability and precision in actuator technologies to ensure safety under extreme operational conditions. Actuators, serving as the “muscles” of aerospace control systems, must execute rapid, accurate maneuvers while withstanding thermal, mechanical, and aerodynamic stresses. This Special Issue focuses on innovative actuator technologies and intelligent control strategies that enhance safety, resilience, and adaptability in next-generation aerospace systems.

We invite contributions that address topics including (but not limited to) the following:

(1) Advanced control systems designs: Novel control-oriented dynamics modeling and simulation, high-performance dynamics controller design, multi-constraint model predictive control and optimization techniques, human–machine shared control systems, and actuator arrangement-based control command allocation.

(2) Fault-tolerant actuation: Redundant control schemes, self-diagnosis/algorithms, and real-time degradation compensation under extreme environments.

(3) AI-integrated actuator control: Machine learning for hysteresis/backlash mitigation, adaptive control under dynamic uncertainties, and physics-informed digital twins for predictive maintenance.

(4) High-fidelity simulation and validation: Multi-physics actuator modeling, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and co-simulation frameworks for safety-critical scenarios.

(5) Cross-domain applications: Actuator solutions for hypersonic flow control, re-entry vehicle stability, thrust vectoring, and autonomous rendezvous/docking.

Submissions should emphasize novel methodologies for improving actuator performance, robustness, and cybersecurity, supported by simulations or experimental validations. Both papers on theoretical breakthroughs and applied research articles are welcome, particularly those bridging automatic control theory, artificial intelligence, and aerospace engineering.

Dr. Liang Sun
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Actuators is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• aerospace vehicle control
• control systems design
• safety control
• intelligent control
• model predictive control
• adaptive control
• human–machine shared control
• trustworthy control design and decision-making
• machine learning
• command allocation
• actuator modeling, simulation, and validation