The Design, Ground Test and Flight Validation of a High Accuracy Servo Scheme for Control Moment Gyroscope Application

This paper describes the design, experimental validation and in-orbit implementation of a high accuracy servo scheme for the Control Moment Gyroscope (CMG) gimbal mechanism. The proposed scheme features: 1. the rotor flux Field Oriented Control (FOC) algorithm is applied to control a Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) inverter - Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) drive, and the CMG gimbal mechanism is controlled by PMSM directly with no gears connection. 2. Very small gimbal angular rate as 0.001 deg. /s is obtained and proved to be accurate. 3. High dynamic performance is obtained and the output torque bandwidth is above 17Hz. 4. A reliable security strategy is designed and incorporated into the control unit in case of angular position sensing unit failures. A set of performance tests have been done on the ground and the good performance is validated. Some noteworthy issues met in the developing phase are discussed and their solutions are presented. Then, the flight validation of the servo scheme is presented by the CMG cluster applied in the Remote Sensing Satellite Yaogan XIIII.