Dynamics and Control of Flexible Spacecraft

Dear Colleagues,

Different trends can be identified in the current evolution of space systems. From one side, increasing interest has been dedicated to small, distributed spacecraft, orbiting in formations or constellations that can even reach hundreds or thousands of small satellites. On the other side, specific missions can only be achieved by designing very large monolithic satellites, which are equipped with large dimension antennas, solar arrays, and booms. In this latter case, a specific problem arises, due to the non-negligible elastic dynamics of the large structures, which are the main topic of this Special Issue.

The first building block is certainly the design procedure to include flexible elements in the system plants. Common methods range from finite element models, which provide quite an accurate description of the structure but demand for a large number of degrees of freedom, to reduction methods, like Craig-Bampton modal condensation, assumed mode method, and many others, each having different strengths and weaknesses.

Once the dynamics has been properly designed, a reduction of its complexity is very likely needed in order to implement the control system. With respect to classic attitude control of a spacecraft, different approaches can be followed to implement the control law—it is possible to implement an active control for all the involved state components, considering both attitude and elastic actuators (e.g., piezoelectric devices), or robust attitude controls which suppress the effect of undesired vibrations by properly modulating the gains or the reference trajectory.

I would like to cordially invite you to contribute a paper to this Special Issue of the open access journal Applied Sciences, entitled “Dynamics and Control of Flexible Spacecraft”, which aims to present recent developments in the field of dynamics modeling and control algorithms for very large, flexible spacecraft, both from a purely numerical and from an experimental point of view.

Dr. Marco Sabatini
Guest Editor

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• flexible spacecraft
• robust control
• modal reduction
• linear fractional transformation
• active vibration control
• PZT actuators
• collocated control
• experimental testbed