A Low-speed, Low-acceleration Controller for Cost-effective Reaction-wheels

A Low-speed, Low-acceleration Controller for Cost-effective Reaction-wheels: Design, Simulation & Implementation

Lopes, Wilfred (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science; Hyperion Technologies)

van Genderen, A.J. (mentor)
Hassan HosseinNia, S. (graduation committee)
Monna, Bert (graduation committee)
Wong, J.S.S.M. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Electrical Engineering | Embedded Systems

2021-12-17

With the requirements for CubeSats increasing, a push towards utilizing high­performance equipment has never been greater. Incorporating these equipment in an environment that is cost­, space­ and power­constrained, is challenging. Simultaneously, high­performance equipment require high pointing­accuracy and low­jitter. This thesis proposes the use of a cost­effective reaction­wheel, which utilizes three hall­sensors for accurate attitude­control. Additionally, the requirements state that the reaction­wheel operates in the low­speed region, whilst tracking low­acceleration commands. For this, a controller­structure is designed, simulated & implemented in order to provide accurate angular­velocity estimates at a constant rate. Whilst the angular­velocity estimates are within 1% of the measurements, the angular­acceleration tracking performance relies greatly on the noise of the reaction­wheel torque­friction. Nonetheless, the angular­acceleration mean error was found to be 0.005 RPM/s, with a variance of 0.3 RPM/s on a 0.01 RPM/s reference

Hall-sensor
Low-speed
Reaction-wheel
Observer
Low-acceleration
Low-torque
Sigma-delta
Trajectory generation
FPGA
Control
PI
Torque-friction

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6990819a-4f35-43c9-b7a7-8b0e6689a331

2026-12-22

Double degree in Computer Engineering and Embedded Systems

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Wilfred Lopes