Abstract
This paper presents experimental results of H infinity tracking control for slewing flexible space structures. The model of flexible space structure employed in the experiment consists of a rigid body rotating around a shaft and a flexible beam attached to the rigid body. The minimum time optimal control for flexible structure, which is a multi bang-bang control, is used to obtain a reference optimal trajectory. Two full-bridge strain gauges are located at the root of the beam in order to sense the bending-moment of the flexible beam and a tachometer is located at the rotary shaft of the torque motor in order to measure the angular velocity of the rigid main body. The angular velocity and bending-moment are utilized to calculate the control torque provided to the main body. The effectiveness of the H infinity feedback tracking control on suppression of residual vibration and achieving the goal attitude is studied for two types of flexible beams experimentally.
