Spacecraft nonlinear attitude control with bounded control input

Ali, Imran (2010) Spacecraft nonlinear attitude control with bounded control input. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

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Printed Thesis Information: https://eleanor.lib.gla.ac.uk/record=b2714413

Abstract

The research in this thesis deals with nonlinear control of spacecraft attitude stabilization and tracking manoeuvres and addresses the issue of control toque saturation on a priori basis. The cascaded structure of spacecraft attitude kinematics and dynamics makes the method of integrator backstepping preferred scheme for the spacecraft nonlinear attitude control. However, the conventional backstepping control design method may result in excessive control torque beyond the saturation bound of the actuators. While remaining within the framework of conventional backstepping control design, the present work proposes the formulation of analytical bounds for the control torque components as
functions of the initial attitude and angular velocity errors and the gains involved in the control design procedure. The said analytical bounds have been shown to be useful for tuning the gains in a way that the guaranteed maximum torque upper bound lies within the capability of the actuator and, hence, addressing the issue of control input saturation. Conditions have also been developed as well as the generalization of the said analytical bounds which allow for the tuning of the control gains to guarantee prescribed stability with the additional aim that the control action avoids reaching saturation while anticipating the presence of bounded external disturbance torque and uncertainties in the spacecraft moments of inertia. Moreover, the work has also been extended blending it with the artificial potential function method for achieving autonomous capability of avoiding pointing constraints for the case of spacecraft large angle slew manoeuvres. The idea of undergoing such manoeuvres using control moment gyros to track commanded angular momentum rather than a torque command has also been studied. In this context, a gimbal position command generation algorithm has been proposed for a pyramid-type cluster of four single gimbal control moment gyros. The proposed algorithm not only avoids the saturation of the angular momentum input from the control moment gyro cluster but also exploits its maximum value deliverable by the cluster along the direction of the commanded angular momentum for the major part of the manoeuvre. In this way, it results in rapid spacecraft slew manoeuvres. The ideas proposed in the thesis have also been validated using numerical simulations and compared with results already existing in the literature.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Qualification Level: Doctoral
Keywords: nonlinear control, backstepping control, attitude control, spacecraft, control moment gyros, control input saturation
Subjects: T Technology > TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
T Technology > TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Autonomous Systems and Connectivity
Supervisor's Name: Radice, Dr. Gianmarco
Date of Award: 2010
Depositing User: Mr. Imran Ali
Unique ID: glathesis:2010-1717
Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
Date Deposited: 14 Apr 2010
Last Modified: 10 Dec 2012 13:45
URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/1717

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