Adaptive sliding mode control of tethered satellite deployment with input limitation

This paper proposes a novel adaptive sliding mode tension control method for the deployment of tethered satellite, where the input tension limitation is taken into account. The underactuated governing equations of the tethered satellites system are firstly derived based on Lagrangian mechanics theory. Considering the fact that the tether can only resist axial stretching, the tension input is modelled as input limitation. New adaptive sliding mode laws are addressed to guarantee the stability of the tethered satellite deployment with input disturbance, meanwhile to eliminate the effect of the limitation features of the tension input. Compared with the classic control strategy, the newly proposed adaptive sliding mode control law can deploy the satellite with smaller overshoot of the in-plane angle and implement the tension control reasonably and effectively in engineering practice. The numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.