The synthesis of trajectories in piezoelectric attitude control devices for nanosatellites

Abstract

Multi-degrees-of-freedom piezoelectric actuators can be successfully used for the attitude control of nanosatellites. Piezoelectric actuators enable to increase the resolution of a system and to reduce a number of components. Therefore, the accuracy and reliability of the control system increases, while the cost of the system decreases. An actuator consisting of a piezoelectric cylinder and a solid sphere was proposed to use for a 3D attitude control device. 3D oscillations of the contact points of the cylinder were employed to achieve 3D rotation of the sphere. However,the trajectory planning problem of the contact points has been encountered, thus a detailed investigation of that problem is provided in this paper. The functions of the torque and contacting forces are calculated. The mathematical model was developed and experimentally confirmed.