Spacecraft Attitude Tracking and Energy Storage Using Flywheels

The control law of the flywheel in an integrated power and attitude control system (IPACS) for a spacecraft is investigated. The flywheels are used as attitude control actuators as well as energy storage device. A feedback control law for attitude tracking is firstly developed by using Lyapunov approach, and then a torque based control law of the flywheel is studied. The control torque vector of the flywheel is decomposed into three parts which are orthogonal to one another by using the method of singularity value decomposition (SVD). One part is used to provide the attitude control torque, another part is used to store energy with given power, and the last part is used to accomplish wheel speed equalization to avoid wheel saturation caused by large difference among the wheel spin rates. A management scheme for energy storage power using kinetic energy feedback is proposed to keep energy balance, which can avoid wheel saturation caused by superfluous energy. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the control scheme