Matlab GUI-based simulation platform design of flexible satellite attitude control and vibration suppression

With the development of aerospace mission, more and more satellites adopt large scale flexible structures. However, rigid body motion of flexible spacecraft is strongly coupled with elastic vibration of flexible structure, which may lead to oscillation and overshoot of satellite attitude, even instability. The conventional method, PID plus structural filter, is an effective tool to suppress vibrations of solar panels. The typical features of this control schemes are that accurate panel vibration frequency is required, and adjacent vibration frequency should not be close to each other. Unfortunately, these requirements are not always satisfied in reality. With a view to tackling the above limitations, H_∞ robust controller for a flexible satellite model with parametric uncertainties of solar panel vibration frequency was adopted in this paper, and numerical simulations show that the robust controller has obvious advantages over other two methods. In addition, the high control accuracy and short transition time prove that the robust controller based on the principle of weighted mixed-sensitivity H_∞ optimization can suppress the vibration accurately. At the same time, Graphic User Interface (GUI) was used to design a simulation platform, which is served as the test bed for the robust controller design for flexible satellite, providing good interaction and extensibility. Overall, the numerical simulation results, based on the well-established platform, clearly establish the superiority and robustness of the robust controller in suppressing the flexible vibration, even though the vibration frequency perturbation of flexible structure happens. It is illustrated sufficiently that the established platform is helpful to the controller design and analysis, and the application of weighted mixed-sensitivity H_∞ optimization to the attitude controller design of flexible satellite can satisfy the control requirement of vibra- ion suppression.