Robust Controllers for a Flexible Satellite Model

TL;DR

This paper develops and analyzes robust control strategies for a flexible satellite modeled by PDE-ODE equations, demonstrating exponential stability and asymptotic velocity convergence through theoretical proofs and numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces two internal model based controllers for a PDE-ODE satellite model, ensuring stability and velocity tracking, which is a novel approach in this context.

Findings

Exponential stability of the satellite model is proven.

Two controllers achieve asymptotic convergence of velocities.

Numerical simulations compare controller performances.

Abstract

We consider a PDE-ODE model of a flexible satellite that is composed of two identical flexible solar panels and a center rigid body. We prove that the satellite model is exponentially stable in the sense that the energy of the solutions decays to zero exponentially. In addition, we construct two internal model based controllers, a passive controller and an observer based controller, such that the linear and angular velocities of the center rigid body converge to the given sinusoidal signals asymptotically. A numerical simulation is presented to compare the performances of the two controllers.