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High pointing accuracy and stabilization are significant for spacecrafts to carry out Earth observing, laser communication and space exploration missions. However, when a spacecraft undergoes large angle maneuver, the excited elastic oscillation of flexible appendages, for instance, solar wing and onboard antenna, would downgrade the performance of the spacecraft platform. This paper proposes a coupling control method, which synthesizes the adaptive sliding mode controller and the positive position feedback (PPF) controller, to control the attitude and suppress the elastic vibration simultaneously. Because of its prominent performance for attitude tracking and stabilization, the proposed method is capable of slewing the flexible spacecraft with a large angle. Also, the method is robust to parametric uncertainties of the spacecraft model. Numerical simulations are carried out with a hub-plate system which undergoes a single-axis attitude maneuver. An attitude control testbed for the flexible spacecraft is established and experiments are conducted to validate the coupling control method. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the method discussed above can effectively decrease the stabilization time and improve the attitude accuracy of the flexible spacecraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a dual-stage control system design method for the rotational maneuver control and vibration stabilization of a flexible spacecraft. In this design approach, the sub-systems of attitude control and vibration suppression are designed separately using the low order model. Based on the sliding mode control (SMC) theory, a discontinuous attitude control law in the form of the input voltage of the reaction wheel is derived to control the orientation of the spacecraft, incorporating the L2-gain performance criterion constraint. The resulting closed-loop system is proven to be uniformly ultimately bounded stability and the effect of the external disturbance on both attitude quaternion and angular velocity can be attenuated to the prescribed level as well. In addition, an adaptive version of the control law is designed for adapting the unknown upper bounds of the lumped disturbance such that the limitation of knowing the bound of the disturbance in advance is released. For actively suppressing the induced vibration, strain rate feedback control method is also investigated by using piezoelectric materials as additional sensors and actuators bonded on the surface of the flexible appendages. Numerical simulations are performed to show that rotational maneuver and vibration suppression are accomplished in spite of the presence of disturbance and uncertainty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]