Active Vibration Control of Flexible Satellites Using Solid Propellant Microthruster Array

Abstract

The paper studies a method which uses a solid propellant microthruster array (SPMA) as an actuator to control vibration of solar panels and the attitude of a satellite simultaneously. To solve the controller design problems of the system with periodic switching characteristic, which is caused by the mismatch between the solid propellant microthruster combustion duration and the digital control system sampling period, Floquet theory is used to obtain an equivalent time-invariant model. Based on the state-dependent Riccati equation method, an optimal antisaturation controller is designed to overcome the saturation problem of the attitude flywheel which occurs in the cooperation with the SPMA actuator. In terms of the input quantization problem of the SPMA actuator, a switching strategy is proposed to achieve global asymptotic stability. Comparison of the numerical results for SPMA and piezoelectric actuators show that the SPMA actuator can suppress the low-frequency vibration much more quickly. Finally, a Monte Carlo approach is used to investigate the robustness of the controller and the switching strategy with respect to model uncertainties.