Sensitivity of a physically realizable heliogyro root pitch control system to inherent damping models

The heliogyro solar sail employs high aspect ratio blades that are rigidized by spinning about the central spacecraft, eliminating the need for structural booms typically used to tension traditional square sails. The easily scalable heliogyro gains its maneuverability by actuating the blades at their root with sinusoidal pitch profiles. The blade vibration caused by maneuvering must be attenuated using active control since there is little inherent damping in the blade material. Due to the small root pitch control torques required, on the order of 2 µNm, compared to the large friction torques associated with a root pitch actuator, it has only recently been shown that a single blade heliogyro impedance controller can add damping to the lowest frequency torsional modes of the blade in the presence of modeled actuator friction torques. However, the need to measure blade twist away from the actuator at the root creates a non-collocated control system. Some inherent damping at the blade’s higher frequency modes is therefore needed to stably add damping to the larger-magnitude low-frequency modes, hence control design is sensitive to the accuracy of the blade damping model. Recently, damping characterization tests performed on a small-scale heliogyro blade in a high-vacuum chamber invalidated the assumption of a linear viscous torsional blade damping model that was previously used in blade control designs. This paper describes the formulation of three modal damping models based on the new experimental data and their integration into the single blade heliogyro model. A comparison of the robustness and performance envelopes for the baseline proximal blade twist feedback controller using these damping models shows the ability to meet the required settling time of less than 720 s necessary for a heliogyro technology demonstration mission. This comparison of physically realizable root pitch control systems for a heliogyro blade is critical to increasing the sailcraft to Technology Readiness Level three.