Research On Flexible Solar Spacecraft’s Attitude Dynamics And Control Technology

As a new spacecraft propulsion means without consuming any fuel or working fluid on thespacecraft, solar sail is highly appreciated in the world’s entire aerospace industry. Traditional attitudecontrol systems could not meet the attitude control requirements of solar sail spacecraft because of itsstructural characteristics. This paper aims to establish the attitude dynamics theoretical model offlexible solar sail spacecraft and design attitude control system. The simulation results verify thecorrectness of attitude dynamics model and control system.For preliminary study of attitude control effect from different types of actuators, this paper first doresearch on solar sail spacecraft’s rigid body dynamics modeling and attitude control with controlboom system and moving-mass system. For the further research of flexible structure vibrationinfluence on attitude control system, the flexible structure is rationally simplified, and the simplifiedflexible structure is analyzed using the finite element method. The nonlinear coupling dynamic modelof centrebody-control boom-flexible beams multi-body system is established using Lagrange’sequations. The variable gain LQR control based on gain scheduling is designed in order to ensure thelarge angle maneuver ability of solar sail spacecraft. Finally, the simulation results of attitude controlmission in interplanetary solar sail spacecraft’s orbit transfer show that the control boom basedattitude control system using designed control law, which has ability to suppress vibration of flexiblestructures and influence of solar light disturbance torque, has a good performance on flexible solarsail’s large angle attitude maneuver and attitude keeping.To further demonstrate the correctness of the derived model and the designed attitude controlsystem, the rigid-flexible coupling virtual prototyping model is established by ANSYS and ADAMS,and attitude control platform is built in MATLAB. The ADAMS-MATLAB united simulation is donewith bidirectional interface. The results of united simulation highly consistent the MATLABsimulation results, which further verify the veracity of derived theoretical model and indicate thereliable control ability of designed system.