IntroductionThe seeker is one of the most important parts of a missile. It's used to track the target and to provide the inertial stabilization to the detector's pointing vector (Yu and Zhao, 2008). A seeker is generally composed of a detector, a controller for acquisition and tracking and a two-axis orthogonal gimbal system. In the task of long-range precision strike or target positioning, the stability of seeker's line-of-sight (LOS) is crucial to hit accuracy and target location accuracy of a missile. As a highly integrated and high-precision optical-mechatronic system, there might be many factors in a seeker which might degrade the stabilization precision of LOS, such as disturbance torques, gyro noise and drift, structural resonance frequency, control bandwidth, etc (Hilkert, 2008). Amongst these factors, nonlinear frictional moment, which mainly comes from bearings for directly driven gimbal, is normally the major stabilization error source (Stockum, et al., 1988). The nonlinear behavior caused by friction has an adverse influence on the ultra-low velocity and high precision position control of servo mechanisms (Yang, et al., 2014), which could lead to stick-slip and limit cycles during movement of inner and outer gimbals (Olsson and Astrom, 2001, Cheock, et al., 1988). Moreover, friction degrades stabilization by acting as the transference mechanism for base motion disturbance (Lagunowich, et al., 2007). With the development of lightweight, miniaturized seekers, the effect of nonlinear friction is becoming more and more pronounced.Temperature is a critical factor that could change the value of friction torque and its fluctuation property. Ambient temperature of a missile would be very different because of the broad geographical deployment and different seasons, and the environment temperature might change in a wide range of -40℃~+60℃ or much more severe. Especially, in the course of high-speed flight and high-g maneuver, a missile would go through airspace with different temperature and generate immense heat because of friction with atmospheric air, so the temperature of gimbal fluctuates sharply during missile flight. As a consequence, friction torque of gimbal would rise or fall along with the change of ambient temperature.
AbstractNonlinear friction is the main stabilization error source of missile's seeker. In this paper, the frictional torque of a gimbaled-mirror seeker under changing environment temperature is analyzed. The torque is consisted of rolling friction due to elastic hysteresis, sliding friction due to pivoting and friction torque due to lubricant viscosity. Based on the theory of thermo-elasticity, axial and radial coupling thermal deformation between precision bearing and its installation structure are both included in the analysis model. Coupling deformation dramatically changes the actual contact angle and axial force of bearing, which consequently change the value of frictional torque. Temperature effect on viscosity of lubricant is also studied and improved Walther Equation is used...