Track-position and vibration control simulation for strut of the Stewart platform

Abstract

Vibrations inherently generated by on-board disturbance sources degrade the performance of the instruments in an on-orbit spacecraft, which have stringent accuracy requirements. The Stewart platform enables both track-positioning and vibration control. The strut of the Stewart platform is designed as a piezoelectric (PZT) element in series with a voice coil motor (VCM) element and a viscoelastic element. The track-positioning system uses a VCM as the main positioning control driver and a PZT as the positioning compensator. The vibration control system uses the characteristics of struts including active and passive control elements to attenuate the vibration. Simulation results indicate that the Stewart platform with the designed struts has good performance in tracking and vibration attenuation with different interference waves.