FINITE-ELEMENT MODEL-BASED ROBUST CONTROLLERS FOR THE MIDDECK ACTIVE CONTROL EXPERIMENT (MACE)

The Middeck active control experiment (MACE) is a space shuttle flight experiment intended to demonstrate high authority active structural c ontrol in zero gravity (0-g) conditions based on analysis and ground t esting, Finite element structural models are very important for the MA CE program because they can be used to predict the on-orbit dynamics o f the test article, However, finite element models tend to be inaccura te, requiring the use of parametric robust control techniques to achie ve good performance, Several such control techniques and an overall de sign methodology are discussed in this paper, Experimental results fro m several tests are used to illustrate the feasibility of achieving go od H-2 performance on the test article with robust controllers based o n the finite element model. This demonstration improves confidence in the eventual on-orbit performance of this experiment and other future spacecraft.