Control-structure interaction study for the Space Station solar dynamic power module

The authors investigate the feasibility of using a conventional PID (proportional plus integral plus derivative) controller design to perform the pointing and tracking functions for the Space Station Freedom solar dynamic power module. Using this simple controller design, the control/structure interaction effects were also studied without assuming frequency bandwidth separation. From the results, the feasibility of a simple solar dynamic control solution with a reduced-order model, which satisfies the basic system pointing and stability requirements, is suggested. However, the conventional control design approach is shown to be very much influenced by the order of reduction of the plant model, i.e. the number of the retained elastic modes form the full-order model. This suggests that, for complex large structures, such as the Space Station Freedom solar dynamic, the conventional control system design methods may not be adequate