Adaptive structural control for space systems

Vibration reduction will be an important contributor to the success of future earth observing platforms. Unwanted motion in the micrometer to nanometer range must be prevented from interfering with components requiring precise alignment and pointing such as telescopes and interferometers. Active structural control employing smart materials is an ideal technology for accomplishing this goal, however, development is required to produce the algorithms which can maximize the performance of these systems. The control system must be capable of tuning itself to maximize performance in the presence of uncertain dynamics. Herein, ACX proposes to develop an adaptive control system for the robust piezoceramic structural control problem. The proposed system will have several major components, each of which takes advantage of the unique characteristics of systems using piezoceramic actuators for structural control. The control system will consist of several software modules. A system ID module will be used to obtain initial models of the spacecraft dynamics subsequent to major configuration changes. Several different adaptive control schemes including adaptive feedback, adaptive feed-forward and auto-tuning techniques will be included for implementing control laws. A supervisory system will monitor overall performance and the disturbance environment and will switch between control architectures when appropriate.