[Back]

A. Steindl:
"Stabilization of a tethered satellite system by tension control";
Talk: Dynamics Days Europe 2018, Loughborough; 2018-09-03 - 2018-09-07.

The final stage of the deployment process of a tethered satellite system is investigated: When the sub-satellite is already close to its target position, the swinging motions of the satellite and the tether oscillations should be damped out by applying a proper tension force on the tether at the outlet point. While it is possible to reach the final state in finite time, if the motion remains in the orbital plane, the tension control acts parametrically for out-of-plane oscillations and the corresponding oscillation can be extinguished only algebraically slowly. For a massless tether it was shown, that the dynamics is governed by a Hamiltonian Hopf bifurcation and the optimal control is determined by the stable manifold. Computing the Normal Form a control law for both in-plane and out-of-plane oscillations can be found. In this talk that approach is applied to a tethered satellite system with a light tether.

Optimal control; Hamiltonian Hopf bifurcation; Invariant Manifolds