Fault-tolerant control and vibration suppression of flexible spacecraft: An interconnected system approach

This paper considers a fault-tolerant control and vibration suppression problem of flexible spacecraft. The attitude dynamics is modeled by an interconnected system, in which the rigid part and the flexible part are coupled with each other. Such a model allows us to use the interconnected system approach to analyze the flexible spacecraft. Both distributed and decentralized observer-based fault-tolerant control schemes are developed, under which the closed-loop stability of flexible spacecraft can be ensured by using the cycle-small-gain theorem. Compared with the traditional method, this paper considers the faults occurred not only in the rigid parts, but also in the flexible parts. In addition, the application of the interconnected system approach simplifies the system model of flexible spacecraft, thereby the difficulty of theoretical analysis and engineering practice of fault-tolerant control of flexible spacecraft are greatly reduced. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods and the comparison of different fault-tolerant control approach.