Flexibility Control of Solar Battery Paddles : 1st Report, A Method of Vibration and Attitude Control Based on Outputs of Solar Instrument Sensors

Abstract

Flexible solar battery paddles of spacecrafts have low frequency vibrational characteristics due to the stringent limitation of the weight of launched rockets. The basic problem dealt with here is how to estimate and control the vibrational modes of flexible booms of the arrays even in large angle attitude maneuvers. First a proposed mode estimation method with use of outputs of solar cells is shown to give good estimation of the vibrational modes. Then, it is shown that even static output maximization control in a desired direction cannot work stably without flexibility control based on the mode estimation and that the boom is controlled dynamically based on the feedback control theory so as to suppress the vibration of the arrays even in large angle attitude maneuvers.