The Energy Management for the Impact/Vibration Control in the Non-cooperative Space Target Capture

Abstract

On orbit capture is an essential technical for space debris removal, refueling or malfunction satellite repairing. While due to the uncertainty of non-cooperative targets, the impact between the manipulator and the space non-cooperative target is inevitable. It may alter the position and the attitude of the spacecraft’s base, and cause the on-orbit tasks fail, and the energy of the impact/vibration is dissipated. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for impact/vibration control and energy management in the process of non-cooperative space target capture. In which, a passive energy harvesting device, which is installed between the satellite and the capture device, is design to harvest the energy of the impact/vibration in the space target capture. In the capture process, the impact/vibration perturbation is reduced by nonlinear damping and friction of the isolation device, and the energy of which is harvested. The dynamic equation of the energy harvesting system is provided, and a sliding control approach is developed to stable the impact/vibration perturbation. Then a novel energy management for the impact perturbation control of the capture process is proposed, in which the total energy consumption is defined as the control energy consumption minus the harvested energy. The control time is regarded as a free variable to optimize and minimized the total energy consumption is the optimization target. This work provides a useful method for the passive suppression system design and optimization for the perturbation control of the non-cooperative spacecraft capture.