Active vibration control for flexible spacecraft during large angle maneuver using piezoelectric ceramic elements

Minimizing vibrations of a flexible spacecraft actuated by on-off thrusters is a challenging task. This paper presents a new approach to vibration reduction of flexible spacecraft during rest-to-rest maneuvers by designing a dynamic controller only using attitude measures for desired attitude rotation and smart materials for active, vibration suppression. The Lyapunov technique is applied to the design of this dynamic controller. However, the operation of on-off thruster firing during attitude maneuver will introduce vibrations to the flexible appendages to some degree, which prevents precision pointing of the onboard payloads. To actively suppress vibrations introduced to the flexible appendages, embedded piezoelectric ceramic patches are used as both sensors and actuators to detect and counter react to the induced vibration during and after the maneuver. For active vibration suppression using the piezoelectric ceramic patches, positive position. feedback (PPF) control targeting at the first fourth flexible modes of the flexible spacecraft was used. The performances of this approach were assessed in terms of level of vibration reduction at resonance modes and speed of the response. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the controller design strategy for attitude control and PPF for active vibration suppression.