Active control technology for flexible solar array disturbance suppression

The satellite attitude is disturbed by uneven movement of the solar array driven by traditional stepper motor assembly. In order to reduce the attitude disturbances resulting from solar array drive mechanisms of high-resolution satellites, permanent magnet synchronous motors are employed as driving units. The flexible modes of the solar array directly connected with the driving motor output shaft are detected by the feedback element. Through feeding back the flexible modes to the drive mechanism controller, the active control and disturbance suppression of the solar array are realized. Purely employing the traditional PI regulator would cause low stability margin and is easy to couple with the low-order mode of solar array. To overcome the shortcomings of the traditional PI regulator, a phase compensation active control strategy is proposed. Ground and on-orbit experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm. Furthermore, the advancement is verified by the comparative analysis of attitude disturbance to the satellite. The phase compensation active control strategy combined with PI regulator has been successfully applied in a high-resolution satellite.