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

姿态稳定对于成功完成任何空间任务都是相当重要的。在过去五十年中，已经发展了几种确定卫星姿态和稳定卫星的方法。提出的项目将探索一种新型姿态控制方法的可行性，该方法使用金字塔布置的流体环。该姿态控制系统具有体积小、重量轻、成本低等优点，具有较大的控制力矩。这些流体环也有可能用于姿态确定和热控制。将开发两个数学模型来研究安装了所提议系统的卫星的动力学：第一个模型将假定流体环是刚性的，而第二个模型将考虑流体环的结构灵活性。将利用所提出的流体环系统开发姿态控制、姿态确定和热控制算法。这一概念将通过实验加以验证。如果模拟和实验结果令人鼓舞，将建造原型机。

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.