Development of a computer-balanced motion table: A ground testing facility for microsatellite attitude control systems.

摘要

This thesis documents the design, build, and test, of a microsatellite attitude control system ground testing facility at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Space Flight Laboratory. This facility is called a three-axis motion table. The motion table provides three rotational degrees of freedom similar to those experienced by a satellite in space. The trait that complicates the design of a motion table is that it has to be mass balanced.; A Matlab simulation of the movement and balancing of the motion table was completed. The simulation served three important purposes: (1) to educate the author on the mathematics involved in the workings and balancing of the table, (2) to quantify how well the table could be balanced with various quality sensors and actuators that were available off-the-shelf, (3) to quantify the errors induced by introducing simplifications to the balancing algorithm. It was shown that with a suite of affordable off-the-shelf sensors the balance algorithm is able to determine the mass center position to approximately 2% of what the mass center offset is during the recording of the platform motion data. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)