Multi-degree-of-freedom vibration reduction strategy of the solar array drive system

The operation disturbance induced by the solar array drive system (SADS) and the residual vibration of solar array following the attitude adjustment of the spacecraft obviously affect the dynamics environment, quick stabilization, and attitude stability of the high-precision spacecraft. However, these two kinds of vibration disturbance are characterized by distinct vibration categories, direction of vibration, and modal shapes. A multi-degree-of-freedom vibration reduction strategy (VRS) was presented to improve the dynamic characteristics of SADS and then to weaken these disturbances synthetically in this paper. SADS applying this VRS was modeled based on the virtual work principle, and the influence of the stiffness and damping parameters of this VRS on the SADS dynamic characteristics was analyzed. Then a prototype of vibration reduction device (VRD) was designed and verified by disturbance characteristic and modal experiments. The results indicate that the equivalent stiffness of VRD is critical to the natural frequency of SADS and thus should be carefully deliberated to avoid resonance. The equivalent damping of VRD always has positive correlation with modal damping. A good performance up to 40% in terms of operation disturbance suppression and a greater than 56% decrease of the damping time for 99% residual vibration have been obtained.