Energy transfer between the rigid body and the deployable or retractable flexible appendage of spacecraft

In this paper, energy transfer between the rigid body and the deployable or retractable flexible appendage of spacecraft is investigate. We observe that when the frequency of the controlled rigid body is close or equal to the one of the flexible appendage, energy will be transferred from the part of high vibration intensity (such as the appendage) to the part of low vibration intensity (such as the rigid body). The phenomena is applied to the attitude control design of spacecraft. In the numerical simulation the proposed control strategy based on energy transfer, variable parameter PD controller, is implemented on a flexible spacecraft, which is a hub with a deployable and retractable flexible cantilever beam appendage. The results of simulation have verified the efficiency of this kind of control strategy in suppressing the vibration of flexible spacecraft.