Ph.D. received on: 17/4/1998

E-mail: pignatelli@dis.uniroma1.it

Tutor: Prof. S. Monaco, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
 
 

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A Satellite Attitude Control Simulator Platform (S.A.C.S.): design, realisation, and comparative study of several control strategies   ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Advisor:

Prof. S. Monaco, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
 

Summary:

Attitude control is a problem of great importance for space systems. The research obtained several results in the last ten years, and proposed new solutions by the innovative control strategies. All the systems used in space environment have to overcome high requirements, in terms of reliability and robustness. For the same reason, at the moment the new results obtained by the research on attitude control are not used in missions.
The aim of the present thesis is to reduce this gap between the space applications and the research results on attitude control.
A substantial part of the work was involved in the creation, the design and the realisation of a satellite attitude control simulator (S.A.C.S.). This mechanical platform allows to obtain experimental results, validating the robustness and comparing the performances of different control strategies, in a simple and cheap way and which is also easy to repeat. Before the innovative technical solutions are used, it will obtain the industrial design patent status, in such way it will become an industrial property of ASI (Italian Space Agency), that has been supporting the project since its initial phase.
On the basis of the mathematical models, several controllers have been designed and implemented on such a platform, both using consolidated methodologies, such as PID and PD, and the modern non-linear strategies, such as feedback linearisation, robust control, adaptive control, and the more innovative fuzzy and neural nets. In this context the aspects of the digital implementation were investigated, even with a multirate approach.
These results can constitute a contribution to the research on space systems, and overall a step in the direction of increasing the reliability, robustness and feasibility of the more innovative control strategies, for an eventual use in future missions.

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