Title: Enhancement of attitude control of flexible spacecraft with disturbance observer-sliding mode control for internal vibration suppression

Authors: Khouane Boulanouar; Benmansour Jalal Eddine; Hadek Alaa Nada; Aizi Belkacem

Addresses: Department of Mission and Space Systems, Satellite Development Center, Algerian Space Agency, BP 4065, Ibn Rochd USTO, 31130 Oran, Algeria ' Department of Research in Space Mechanics, Satellite Development Center, Algerian Space Agency, BP 4065, Ibn Rochd USTO, 31130 Oran, Algeria ' Department of Electrical Engineering, National Polytechnic School of Oran, Maurice Audin, ENPO Oran, Algeria ' Department of Electrical Engineering, National Polytechnic School of Oran, Maurice Audin, ENPO Oran, Algeria

Abstract: This paper addresses the attitude control problem in spacecraft systems subjected to multiple sources of disturbances. To estimate these disturbances, it is important to consider factors such as vibration torque from solar panels, environmental disturbance torques, and unmodelled dynamics of the flexible spacecraft. We propose an enhanced sliding mode attitude control (SMC) with a disturbance observer (DO). Based on the estimates provided by this observer, we employ a SMC law optimised for spacecraft stabilisation using the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm. Lyapunov stability theory proves closed-loop system stability and estimation error convergence. Comparative simulations between the proposed control scheme and proportional-derivative (PD) control optimised with PSO highlight the superior performance of our approach. The results show that the PSO-optimised controller enables rapid convergence of the flexible spacecraft's attitude. To evaluate the controller's accuracy, the root mean square error (RMSE) of the attitude error is used as the performance method.

Keywords: flexible spacecraft; vibration suppression; PSO; attitude control; disturbance observer; sliding mode control.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSPACESE.2025.144380

International Journal of Space Science and Engineering, 2025 Vol.7 No.2, pp.170 - 195

Received: 04 Aug 2024
Accepted: 16 Dec 2024
Published online: 10 Feb 2025 *

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