NEAR-MINIMUM-TIME MANEUVERS OF LARGE STRUCTURES - THEORY AND EXPERIMENTS

This paper describes the design and implementation of neat-minimum-tim e control laws for the Advance Space Structures Technology Research Ex periments test article located at the Phillips Laboratory, Edwards Air Force Base, The test article is equipped with compressed air thruster s that can be throttled. The mathematical model of the rotational moti on is obtained by using experimental data and includes effects such as thruster dynamics, fuel constraints, leakage, and multibody interacti ons. Both open-loop and feedback strategies are developed and verified experimentally, The open-loop thruster profiles are generated using c onstrained parameter optimization, The feedback control profiles are g enerated using Lyapunov stability theory, for both final position regu lation and tracking of the open-loop commands. The results show excell ent agreement between theory and experiment.