Attitude synchronization for flexible spacecraft formation with actuator faults

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of attitude synchronization for flexible spacecraft system with actuator faults is investigated. The spacecraft formation is studied in a leader-following architecture and the reference attitude is represented by a virtual leader. A distributed unit quaternion-based synchronization control law is proposed for flexible spacecraft with loss of actuator effectiveness fault. To damp out the induced oscillations of the spacecraft's flexible appendages, an adaptive parameter is introduced. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.