ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

The fast development of space technologies represents, often, a fundamental source of possibilities and ideas: each time a new objective is achieved, companies can push their limits a step forward, to face harder challenges. The impact of vibrations on attitude control performances is one of these. The growing interest in the topic of the dynamic coupling between vibrations attitude dynamics is due to several factors characterising a space mission. The increasing performances of payloads and antennas imply more severe pointing requirements and reflect in more power demanding devices. Since the using of batteries is limited, larger and more flexible panels became necessary. Depending on the mission, the combination of payloads needs and of the elastic response of the panels may affect the pointing accuracy and become critical from the Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) point of view. The aim of the research is to provide a robust analytical model, translated in an MatLab-Simulink Tool to assess the impact of vibration in Open/Closed-Loop Simulation of attitude control response. The analytical base of the model relies on the Ritz-Galerkin Approximation and the associated Equations of Motions are formulated according to the Lagrangian Formalism in Quasi-Coordinates.