Since the dawn of the space race, satellites have grown rapidly in complexity and shrunk equally rapidly in size. Most of them contain an Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) on board for pointing and detumbling manoeuvres. These intricate systems are designed for an outer space environment, hence, phenomenon otherwise abscent in space, such as gravity and aerodynamic drag present a challenge in validating these systems on Earth. The gimbal suspension testbed aims to provide a 3 Degree of Freedom (DoF) suspension where the mounted satellite under test can rotate about either axis. The suspension induces disturbance torques that must be modeled in order for the testbed to be characterized. This is accomplished by formulating the necessary gimbal dynamics, bearing friction, aerodynamic and Center of Mass (CoM) displacement torque model. This yields a relationship from which all torques present in the system can be expressed in terms of the angles, angular velocities and angular accelerations of the gimbal frames. By measuring the angles and obtaining the velocities and accelerations through numerical differentiation, the torques that correspond to a certain motion can be calculated. Furthermore, the thesis covers the iterative design of the gimbal suspension and all of its constituents, the angular measurement method and a Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation to estimate deformations. The result is presented in terms of a simulation that validates the models by predicting its behaviour for certain movement. The final result is a series of characterization plots that tells the user of the gimbal testbed how much torque must be produced by the CubeSat ADCS in order to operate it. ; Sedan begynnelsen av rymdkapplöpningen har satelliter snabbt ökat i komplexitet och lika snabbt minskat i storlek. De flesta satelliter har ett attitydsbestänings- och kontrollsystem (ADCS) ombord för att kunna utföra vissa manövrar. Dessa system är designade för rymdmiljön, därför kan fenomen som annars är frånvarande i ...


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    Title :

    Design and Qualification of a Gimbal Suspension for Attitude Control System Testing of CubeSats


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2021-01-01


    Type of media :

    Theses


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    DDC:    629



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