Robust vibration suppression of an adaptive circular composite plate for satellite thrust vector control

Abstract

In this paper, a novel application of adaptive composite structures, a University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) smart composite platform, is developed for the Thrust Vector Control (TVC) of satellites. The device top plate of the UHM platform is an adaptive circular composite plate (ACCP) that utilizes integrated sensors/actuators and controllers to suppress low frequency vibrations during the thruster firing as well as to potentially isolate dynamic responses from the satellite structure bus. Since the disturbance due to the satellite thruster firing can be estimated, a combined strategy of an adaptive disturbance observer (DOB) and feed-forward control is proposed for vibration suppression of the ACCP with multi-sensors and multi-actuators. Meanwhile, the effects of the DOB cut-off frequency and the relative degree of the low-pass filter on the DOB performance are investigated. Simulations and experimental results show that higher relative degree of the low-pass filter with the required cut-off frequency will enhance the DOB performance for a high-order system control. Further, although the increase of the filter cut-off frequency can guarantee a sufficient stability margin, it may cause an undesirable increase of the control bandwidth. The effectiveness of the proposed adaptive DOB with feed-forward control strategy is verified through simulations and experiments using the ACCP system.