Design and development of active fluid-ring based attitude control subsystem for satellites

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Attitude stability is of considerable importance for successful completion of any space mission. Several methods of attitude determination and stabilization of satellites have been developed over the last five decades. The proposed project will explore the feasibility of a novel attitude control method using fluid rings in a pyramid arrangement. Such an attitude control system appears to have certain advantages such as relatively large control torque for its size, light weight and low cost. These fluid rings have the potential to be used for attitude determination and thermal control as well. Two mathematical models will be developed to study the dynamics of the satellite fitted with the proposed system: the first one will assume the fluid rings to be rigid, while the second one will consider the structural flexibility of the fluid rings. Algorithms for attitude control, attitude determination and thermal control using the proposed fluid-ring system will be developed. The concept will be validated by conducting experiments. If the simulation and experimental results are encouraging, a prototype will be built.