Huo Mingying, Zhao Jun, Xie Shaobiao, Qi Naiming
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Heilongjiang, People's Republic of China.
PLoS One. 2015 May 7;10(5):e0125901. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125901. eCollection 2015.
The paper discusses the coupled attitude-orbit dynamics and control of an electric-sail-based spacecraft in a heliocentric transfer mission. The mathematical model characterizing the propulsive thrust is first described as a function of the orbital radius and the sail angle. Since the solar wind dynamic pressure acceleration is induced by the sail attitude, the orbital and attitude dynamics of electric sails are coupled, and are discussed together. Based on the coupled equations, the flight control is investigated, wherein the orbital control is studied in an optimal framework via a hybrid optimization method and the attitude controller is designed based on feedback linearization control. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy, a transfer problem from Earth to Mars is considered. The numerical results show that the proposed strategy can control the coupled system very well, and a small control torque can control both the attitude and orbit. The study in this paper will contribute to the theory study and application of electric sail.
本文讨论了基于电帆的航天器在日心转移任务中的耦合姿态-轨道动力学与控制。首先将表征推进推力的数学模型描述为轨道半径和帆角的函数。由于太阳风动压加速度是由帆的姿态引起的，电帆的轨道和姿态动力学相互耦合，因此一并进行讨论。基于耦合方程研究了飞行控制，其中通过混合优化方法在最优框架下研究轨道控制，并基于反馈线性化控制设计姿态控制器。为验证所提出控制策略的有效性，考虑了从地球到火星的转移问题。数值结果表明，所提出的策略能够很好地控制耦合系统，且较小的控制扭矩就能同时控制姿态和轨道。本文的研究将有助于电帆的理论研究与应用。
