MICRO-VIBRATION MECHANISM 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 structural characteristics of the momentum wheel are analysed to explain the micro-vibration mechanism. Next, the modal characteristics of the momentum wheel are analysed with the help of FEM software. Then, a new metal rubber isolator is designed to achieve efficient micro-vibration isolation based on the genetic algorithm. Finally, micro-vibration isolation experiments are conducted for verification. It is demonstrated that the non-continuous and non-uniform structure will affect the vibration characteristics of the momentum wheel to a certain, and the design procedure has been validated against experimental results, which can be extended to design other meter rubber isolators. 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.