A composite anti-disturbance control scheme for attitude stabilization and vibration suppression of flexible spacecrafts

There exist multiple disturbances resulting from the structural vibrations of flexible appendages, unknown external and internal disturbances, and parameter uncertainties, which affect the attitude control performance seriously. To enhance the disturbance attenuation performance and vibration suppression ability, a composite anti-disturbance control scheme (CADCS) based on disturbance observer is proposed for attitude stabilization and vibration reduction of flexible spacecraft. The CADCS combines a composite disturbance observer (CDO) and a PD controller with feedforward. The multiple disturbances are equivalent to slowly varying disturbance and harmonic disturbance. The CDO can estimate two types of disturbance and compensate for them through feedforward. The PD controller realizes the asymptotic convergence by compensating the disturbance from CDO. The CADCS based on CDO and PD controller is not only simple and easy to realize, but also yields better vibration suppression and anti-disturbance performance. Simulation results of a certain spacecraft demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CADCS.