Deployment dynamics and control of large-scale flexible solar array system with deployable mast

•Dynamic equation of the solar array system is established by the Jourdain velocity variation principle.•A new method for dynamics of the deployable mast with topology changes is introduced.•A proportional-derivative (PD) controller is designed to eliminate the drift of spacecraft main-body.

In this paper, deployment dynamics and control of large-scale flexible solar array system with deployable mast are investigated. The adopted solar array system is introduced firstly, including system configuration, deployable mast and solar arrays with several mechanisms. Then dynamic equation of the solar array system is established by the Jourdain velocity variation principle and a method for dynamics with topology changes is introduced. In addition, a PD controller with disturbance estimation is designed to eliminate the drift of spacecraft mainbody. Finally the validity of the dynamic model is verified through a comparison with ADAMS software and the deployment process and dynamic behavior of the system are studied in detail. Simulation results indicate that the proposed model is effective to describe the deployment dynamics of the large-scale flexible solar arrays and the proposed controller is practical to eliminate the drift of spacecraft mainbody.