Abstract
This paper presents the design of a flexible bending actuator using shape memory alloy (SMA) and its integration in attitude control for solar sailing. The SMA actuator has advantages in its power-to-weight ratio and light weight. The bending mechanism and models of the actuator were designed and developed. A neural network based adaptive controller was implemented to control the non-linear nature of the SMA actuator. The actuator control modules were integrated into the solar sail attitude model with a quaternion PD controller that formed a cascade control. The feasibility and performance of the proposed actuator for attitude control were investigated and evaluated, showing that the actuator could generate 1.5 × 10−3 Nm torque which maneuvered a 1600 m2 CubeSat based solar sail by 45° in 14 h. The results demonstrate that the proposed SMA bending actuator can be effectively integrated in attitude control for solar sailing under moderate external disturbances using an appropriate controller design, indicating the potential of a lighter solar sail for future missions.
Highlights
Solar sails and electric sails (E-sails) have attracted interest in deep space exploration and de-orbiting
Since the first attempt at a solar sail mission, Cosmos 1, in 2005 [1], solar sailing has become more practical with the advancement of computer technology and onboard electronics, leading to the first successful interplanetary solar sail mission, IKAROS, by JAXA in 2010 [2,3]
Future missions adopting E-sails as propulsion methods have been studied, including using E-sails to decelerate the satellite from the speed in the order of 0.05 c to 35 km/s when approaching the Alpha Centauri system [5], and using E-sails to maintain the satellite’s orbit in an artificial equilibrium point [6]
Summary
Solar sails and electric sails (E-sails) have attracted interest in deep space exploration and de-orbiting. There is a need to design an attitude control for a scalable and flexible solar sail. This paper presents a flexible bending actuator for solar sail attitude control using the Shape Memory Alloy (SMA). Due to the feature that SMA can recover its original shape after deflection by heating over its transformation temperature, lightweight SMA-based actuators are attractive alternatives for solar sail boom control [19]. The proposed approach improves the scalability limitation in the existing works discussed above by implementing an SMA actuator on each sail boom that rotates a sail membrane to control the torque for attitude control. SMA actuators are suited to provide an alternative solution to attitude control for solar sailing. The BP network pass the parameters kp, kiI and kdD to PID controller
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