Sloshing-aware attitude control of impulsively actuated spacecraft

Abstract

Abstract-Upper stages of launchers sometimes drift, with the main engine switched-off, for a longer period of time until re-ignition and subsequent payload release. During this period a large amount of propellant is still in the tank and the motion of the fluid (sloshing) has an impact on the attitude of the stage. For the flight phase the classical spring/damper or pendulum models cannot be applied. A more elaborate sloshing-aware model is describe in the paper involving a time-varying inertia tensor.Using principles of hybrid systems theory we model the minimum impulse bit (MIB) effect, that is, the minimum torque that can be exerted by the thrusters. We design a hybrid model predictive control scheme for the attitude control of a launcher during its long coasting period, aiming at minimising the actuation count of the thrusters.

Piecewise attitude tracking control of a gravity gradient microsatellite for coplanar orbital transfer

“…Preda et al outlined a complete methodology for designing a control system that reshapes the dynamic response of the flexible structure to robustly match the dynamics of a given adaptable reference model [18]. Sopasakis et al designed a hybrid model predictive control scheme for the attitude control of a launcher during its long coasting period, aiming at minimizing the actuation count of the thrusters [19].…”