Attitude Control of Rigid-Flexible Coupling Solar Sail

The main characteristics of solar sails are their large size and the extreme flexibility which have a prominent effect on the attitude control of the solar sail.Most existing researches on dynamic analysis and the control law design of solar sails are only based on the rigid dynamic models.In this paper, a rigid-flexible coupling model is proposed for describing dynamics of solar sails in consideration of the flexible characteristics of solar sails.Then an active robust technique is developed for attitude control of the new model.Simulation results demonstrate the stability and robustness of the solar sail overall control system.The final results of the developed dynamic model and the attitude control system of the solar sail spacecraft could be significant for a sail spaceflight experiment in future.