Micro-Vibration Characteristics and Isolation Design for Momentum Wheel

The momentum wheel is a key component of spacecraft for attitude stability and accuracy maintenance. However, the performance of momentum wheel is seriously affected by the micro-vibration during work. Therefore, it is necessary to design vibration isolators for the momentum wheel to reduce the transmitted micro-vibration. In this paper, the rotational excitation dynamical model considering the non-uniform and non-continuous characteristics of momentum wheel is established to explain the micro-vibration characteristics. Then, a new metal rubber isolator is designed to achieve efficient micro-vibration isolation with the help of the genetic algorithm. Finally, micro-vibration isolation experiments are conducted for verification. It is demonstrated that the established dynamic model achieves a refined understanding of the micro-vibration phenomena to a certain extent, and the design procedure has been validated against experimental results. Based on the proposed design procedure, the obtained MR isolator has achieved high micro-vibration isolation efficiency up to 90% in the experiments, which ensures the high performance of momentum wheel.