Active vibration suppression for maneuvering spacecraft with high flexible appendages

- Tow coupling effects are modeled for high-flexible maneuvering spacecraft.
- Approach to improve maneuver accuracy by vibration control via PZT patch is proposed.
- An MPPF vibration controller is designed based on the coupling dynamics.
- Better maneuvering performance is achieved with vibration actively controlled.

The rotational and translational coupling effects that exist in the dynamics of the maneuvering spacecraft with high flexible structures are considered in this paper. The active vibration suppression using the modified positive position feedback control law is applied to the maneuvering spacecraft. The active vibration controller is designed based on the coupling dynamics. Using the calculated coupling parameters, the controller parameters are optimized via the M-norm optimization method. The controller is verified mathematically and experimentally. An air bearing spacecraft simulator is built to carry out the experiment. Simulation and experiment results show that the vibration of the flexible structures is efficiently suppressed by the designed controller and more residual vibration is reduced compared with the same controller without considering the coupling effects. The stability of the angular velocity is improved. As a conclusion, the proposed controller is efficient. The rotational and translational coupling effects should be considered in designing the vibration controller of maneuvering spacecraft.