Publications Details
Moving mass trim control system design
This paper describes the design of a moving mass trim control system for maneuvering axisymmetric reentry vehicles. The moving mass trim controller is composed of three equal masses that are independently positioned in order to deliver a desired center of mass position. For a slowly spinning reentry vehicle, the mass offset creates a trim angle-of-attack to generate modest flight path corrections. The control system must maintain the desired position of each mass in the face of large disturbances. A novel algorithm for determining the desired mass positions is developed in conjunction with a preliminary controller design. The controller design is based on classical frequency domain techniques where a bound on the disturbance magnitude is used to formulate the disturbance rejection problem. Simulation results for the controller are presented for a typical reentry vehicle.