ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

The dynamic interaction between flexible satellites and the liquid propellant contained in its tanks is a recurrent problematic. Under these conditions, the AOCS development shall ensure the system pointing performances and the robustness of the control. While the liquid behaviour under acceleration is well-covered by simplified mechanical models, zero-g phases are not covered but need to be tackled during the design of specific missions in order to ensure their success. This problematic is not new, since years ago research on this field is the topic of some publications each year, but no generic solution exists. The need of having an industrial solution has motivated the AIRBUS teams to invest on a solution generic enough to tackle these problematics. The here presented solution has the main interest to be easy applicable to an industrial process: it has been successfully used on JUICE program (ESA).