Maneuvers and vibration suppression of flexible spacecraft with input nonlinearities

Abstract

PurposeTo provide an approach to vibration reduction of flexible spacecraft which operates in the presence of various disturbances, model uncertainty and control input non‐linearities during attitude control for spacecraft designers, which can help them analyze and design the attitude control system.Design/methodology/approachThe new approach integrates the technique of active vibration suppression and the method of variable structure control. The design process is twofold: first design of the active vibration controller by using piezoelectric materials to add damping to the structures in certain critical modes in the inner feedback loop, and then a second feedback loop designed using the variable structure output feedback control (VSOFC) to slew the spacecraft and satisfy the pointing requirements.FindingsNumerical simulations for the flexible spacecraft show that the precise attitude control and vibration suppression can be accomplished using the derived vibration attenuator and attitude control controller.Research limitations/implicationsStudies on how to control the flywheel (motor) under the action of the friction are left for future work.Practical implicationsAn effective method is proposed for the spacecraft engineers planning to design attitude control system for actively suppressing the vibration and at the same time quickly and precisely responding to the attitude control command.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills a useful source of theoretical analysis for the attitude control system design and offers practical help for the spacecraft designers.