Adaptive sliding mode control for attitude maneuvering of flexible spacecraft

This paper presents a novel robust control approach for the attitude maneuvering control of a spacecraft with flexible appendages embedded with piezoceramics as sensors and actuators. Based on the nonlinear model of flexible spacecraft, a new attitude maneuvering controller is derived to control the attitude motion of spacecraft by using adaptive sliding mode control technique. For actively suppressing the induced vibration, positive position feedback (PPF) compensator feedback gain is also designed for the lower order modes. Numerical simulations are performed to show that both rotational attitude maneuver and vibration suppression can be accomplished effectively.