Optimizing Designed Variable Speed Control Moment Gyroscopes with Variable Skew Angle

Large torque can be output by the single gimbal control momentum gyroscope (SGCMG) based on the principle of the gyroscopic precession. However, the singularity is a major obstacle to successfully implement the task of the attitude control. The singularity can be avoided by the additional variable flywheel speed of variable speed control moment gyroscopes (VSCMG). Unfortunately, some kind of singularity cannot be effectively avoided. Consequently, the output toque can be only supported by the reaction torque of the flywheel when the singularity is encountered, and the consume power that is determined by the flywheel speed and reaction torque can be greatly increased when the flywheel spin rate over one thousand revolutions per minute. In this paper, the pyramid configuration with variable skew angle of the VSCMG is considered. A new steering law for the VSCMG with variable skew angle is proposed. The singularity that cannot be avoided by the varying flywheel speed can be effectively avoided with assisting of varying the skew angle. Consequently, the requirement of flywheel torque can be reduced. At last, the optimizing VSCMG with variable skew angle can be cast as a multi-objective function with multi-constraints. The particle swarm optimization method is used to solve the optimizing problem. In summary, the VSCMG with variable skew angle can be redesigned with considering of the singularity avoidance and minimizing system power.