Robust attitude and vibration control of a nonlinear flexible spacecraft

In this paper, the problem of attitude control of a three dimension nonlinear flexible spacecraft is investigated. Two nonlinear controllers are presented. The first controller is based on dynamic inversion, while the second approach is composed of dynamic inversion and µ-synthesis schemes. It is assumed that only three torques in three directions on the hub are used. Actuator saturation is also considered in the design of controllers. To evaluate the performance of the proposed controllers, an extensive number of simulations on a nonlinear model of the spacecraft are performed. The performances of the proposed controllers are compared in terms of nominal performance, robustness to uncertainties, vibration suppression of panel, sensitivity to measurement noise, environmental disturbance and nonlinearity in large maneuvers. Simulation results confirm the ability of the proposed controller in tracking the attitude trajectory while suppressing the panel vibration. It is also verified that the perturbations, environment disturbances and measurement errors have only slight effects on the tracking and suppression performances. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society