Fault-tolerant control allocation of a flexible satellite with an infinite-dimensional model

Abstract

Fault-tolerant control allocation (FTCA) strategy is proposed for attitude stabilization of a flexible satellite with actuator redundancy. The control scheme is based on the infinite-dimensional model of a flexible satellite with no discretization, so the spillover instability is eliminated. This is one of the important benefits of the proposed control scheme over the previous FTCA schemes that have been used for the flexible satellite. The proposed scheme contains two modules. The first module provides a virtual control law to meet stabilization and vibration control objectives in the presence of uncertainties and external disturbances. There is no need to implement in-domain actuators on panels to stabilize their vibration. In this module, the virtual control is designed using adaptive integral sliding mode approach where the sliding surface includes angular velocities, internal reaction torques, and nominal control for healthy system. The second module, based on fault/failure information and using a control allocation scheme, provides redistribution of the virtual control law among the available actuators. Due to simultaneous actuator faults and control constraints, there is an error between the actual virtual control and the designed control that affects the overall system stability. To eliminate this error, gain of the virtual control signal is adjusted by an adaptive updating law. The closed-loop system stability is guaranteed for small changes in a neighborhood of the sliding surface with simultaneous vibration damping. A numerical example illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.