Integrated Power, Attitude, and Vibration Control of Gyroelastic Body

Gyroelastic body refers to a flexible structure with distributed angular momentum exchange devices, such as variable speeds control moment gyros (VSCMGs). A VSCMG contains a rotor with high rotating speeds. The direction and the magnitude of the rotor’s angular momentum can be simultaneously tuned.When distributing a set of VSCMGs on a flexible structure, they could simultaneously produce control torques for attitude control and modal forces for vibration suppression. Meanwhile, the high spinning rotor in the VSCMGs can be used for energy storage. Thus, an integrated power, attitude, and vibration control system (IPAVCS) for a free flexible structure can be obtained. In this work, the control scheme for the IPAVCS is developed. A nonlinear controller is first designed to calculate the desired attitude control torques and vibration suppression modal forces for attitude stabilization and vibration suppression. Then, a robust pseudoinverse gimbal steering law and a pseudoinverse rotor acceleration law are developed to generate the desired control input and meet the power requirement, respectively. Numerical examples are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.