Continuous robust fault‐tolerant control and vibration suppression for flexible spacecraft without angular velocity

Abstract

SummaryThe fault‐tolerant control and vibration suppression for flexible spacecraft without angular velocity measurement are investigated. External disturbances, actuator faults, unknown angular velocity, and flexible vibration are addressed simultaneously. Firstly, a model‐free adaptive supertwisting state observer and an angular velocity calculation algorithm in one step are developed by using attitude information only, which can estimate the angular velocity in finite time. Then, on the basis of angular velocity estimation, a novel continuous multivariable integral sliding mode (CMISM) is proposed for the first time, which is a combination of continuous nominal controller and a modified multivariable twisting controller to reject disturbances and faults. The CMISM can stabilize attitudes in finite time and attenuate chattering effectively. Furthermore, the input shaping technique is developed to achieve effective vibration suppression of the flexible appendages. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed method is illustrated by numerical simulations.