PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF AN ATTITUDE CONTROL SYSTEM FOR SOLAR SAILS USING SLIDING MASSES

Abstract

This paper deals with the attitude control performance analysis of a square solar sail with two sliding masses moving along the mast lanyards for pitch and yaw control. A robust nonlinear controller with a feedback and feed forward part is used to control the attitude of the sail. Numerical simulations have been carried out to investigate the system’s ability of performing precise and near-time-optimal reorientation maneuvers as well as the controller’s sensitivity with respect to the sail parameters, like the center of pressure to the center of mass offset or the sail’s geometry. Our simulation results are finally discussed and compared to previous results that have been obtained by others and are reported in the literature.